New life-sciences fund lifts hopes of state's researchers

OLYMPIA — R. James Cook has potatoes on his mind.

A research project at Washington State University could genetically modify the everyday potato into a plant with more protein and vitamin A, said Cook, the university's dean of agricultural, human and natural-resource sciences.

"A whole outline is on the shelf ready for someone to fund it," Cook said.

The state's new Life Sciences Discovery Fund could provide the money to pay for the research.

The fund is Gov. Christine Gregoire's main economic-development project, approved by the Legislature earlier this year. It would spend $350 million — money from the national settlement Gregoire helped negotiate from tobacco companies when she was state attorney general — to support life-sciences research.

Matching money, both federal and private, is expected to bring overall investment in life-science research to more than $1 billion by 2017, according to last fall's Bio21 report, the general plan for how to use the fund. Beginning in 2008, the state would distribute $35 million every year for 10 years.

The idea is to make the state more competitive in preventive and predictive research in health care. This would include both biomedical and agricultural research, said Lura Powell, head of the panel that will oversee the fund.

States such as North Carolina and California invest heavily in scientific research such as biomedicine, and Washington needs to follow suit, said Randy Hodgins, a lobbyist for the University of Washington.

The state has lagged behind others in investing in research, said Jack Faris, president of the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association, an association of biotechnology and biomedical companies and research institutes such as Zymogenetics in Seattle.

The UW and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have done well, but it could be harder in the future to stay competitive, Faris said.

Project supporters hope that a stronger research sector will lead to benefits for the rest of the state economy.

It could mean more jobs in construction, hotels and restaurants, Faris said.

"Just like every Boeing job generated a multiplier of other jobs in the economy, every research job has the same kind of capacity," Faris said.

For the research projects themselves, the money could give the extra boost that high-potential projects need to get off the ground, Hodgins said. The money could, for example, go toward hiring a famous professor, which would in turn attract more attention and money to a project.

It's a little early to predict which projects the money will go to, said Marty Brown, the governor's legislative director. Powell was appointed last week.

But at the University of Washington, among other things, the money could help research that looks at cell proteins, which could ultimately have applications for treating epilepsy, cancer and Alzheimer's disease, Hodgins said.

For the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, which mostly researches malaria vaccines, the fund could mean getting hard-to-find money that would help take a scientific discovery and develop it into a usable vaccine or device, said Jim Gore, chief operating officer of the institute.

Although specific criteria have yet to be decided, Powell said the Life Sciences Discovery Fund Authority, which ultimately will select projects, will most likely look in 2008 for projects that:

• Help make Washington a global leader in 21st-century medicine.

• Enhance health for people in Washington.

• Have potential for being commercialized into viable treatments.

• Have matching money already committed from nonstate sources.

• Have potential for making health care more efficient.

Susannah Malarkey, executive director of Technology Alliance, an association of technology and research institutions and companies, said people need to be prepared to accept the risk that the investment might not pay off immediately.

The fund barely squeaked through the Legislature in April as Republicans objected to the absence of an amendment banning human cloning.

Senate Republican Leader Bill Finkbeiner of Kirkland said the money could be better spent by focusing on paying for research already being conducted at the universities.

"I get nervous about acting more like an investor," he said.