By
Bill Beggs Jr.
ST. LOUIS–If you build it, they will come.
St. Louis has–and they are.
The classic “Field of Dreams” line refers to the fantastic vision
of a man who built a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield in
hopes that departed heroes would come to play.
In the St. Louis region, buckle of the BioBelt, a true story
of Midwestern hopes is unfolding in an area perhaps once overlooked
precisely because of its vast expanses of corn and soybean fields.
Now those crops are one key to a metropolitan resurgence, to
St. Louis claiming its spot on a biotech map once defined chiefly
by places on the east and west coasts.
The story is being told in the silos and stalls, in university
research labs, in conference rooms where scientists and investors
meet. Agricultural advances spur new product development at
pharmaceutical companies. Ideas that improve the quality of
life, that fight disease in plants and animals, that lengthen
human lives, that lessen dependence on fossil fuels, are being
brought from “bench to bed” in and around the Gateway City.
Much of the infrastructure for a burgeoning biotech industry
has been here for decades, with great research universities
and well-established headquarter companies focusing on developing
and nurturing viable concepts. However, it has been only within
the past decade that St. Louis has blossomed into a force to
be reckoned with internationally. In 2005, Dr. Walt Plosila,
vice president of the Technology Partnership Practice at Battelle
said, “Overall, St. Louis has probably moved at a record pace
to position itself in plant and life sciences compared to other
parts of the country. Four years is not a long time to do this.
It took San Diego and Maryland a decade or more.”
A biotechnology corridor for research and tech transfer has
sprung up in a section of town that had long languished. Two
world-class incubators—Center for Emerging Technologies and
Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise—have flourished. Venture
capital firms no longer fly execs in and out to do business
here. They’ve set up shop.
All of which, of course, is just the tip of the tassel on a
corn stalk.
In a city unique in its ability to build consensus, the seeds
for biotech success were fertilized by great minds and cultivated
by visionary civic leaders.
Nearly all will defer to Dr. William H. Danforth, former chancellor
of Washington University in St. Louis, as the man who planted
the first seed.
Danforth is avuncular, approachable. When a reporter spoke with
his assistant about finding some time on his calendar for an
interview, there was a short pause. Then she put the call right
through.
“We felt that St. Louis has wonderful life sciences, but that
we had never done a very good job of commercializing the life
sciences,” says Danforth. “People have gotten behind the effort.
I’m very grateful for the guidance we’ve had.
“St. Louisans work very well together.”
For anyone unfamiliar with the Midwestern work ethic, that’s
a classic understatement, especially from a man so influential
with the Coalition for Plant & Life Sciences, which was formed
by St. Louis’ Regional Chamber and Growth Accociation (RCGA)
in 2000 specifically to drive biotech efforts here.
The effort began by assessing what was already in place. St.
Louis has long been home to such international corporate giants
as Monsanto, Mallinckrodt and Sigma-Aldrich. Add to that world-class
research institutions, including Washington University, Saint
Louis University, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville,
the University of Missouri campuses in St. Louis and Columbia,
and Pfizer’s global center for biologics, the region now boasts
a fertile technology transfer, incubator and start-up environment.
BioBelt companies develop and produce medicines, agricultural
and organic chemicals, medical equipment, and are without peer
in research and development. Nearly 400 plant and life science
enterprises, with 16,000-plus employees, are based here.
Regardless of where in the world biotech efforts are thriving,
they all originate in the very same way.
“Basically it all begins with an idea,” says Dr. William Peck,
who shifted his attention from heading up the Washington University’s
medical school to putting his shoulder into the region’s biotech
efforts. (Meanwhile, he also serves as director of the University’s
Center for Health Policy.) No idea, however, can survive in
a vacuum.
“The overall mission must have a sense of all the components
along the way. With innovation and creativity, it ends with
commercialization, if a region wants to succeed in the endgame.”
While a region may be strong in one key component, observers
say, it may not be up to speed on some of the others. For instance,
the center may be ripe with venture capital, but still need
more time on the vine in terms of a viable incubator.
St. Louis is particularly blessed with each and every factor
vital to supporting an idea from spark to market. In-town venture
capital companies draw additional national attention, and investment.
Men and women who come here for jobs are flabbergasted at the
cost of living, a mere fraction of that in Boston, Mass., or
La Jolla, Calif.
University communities may be where an idea originates, but
they also are essential to educating the men and women who will
go on to work in biotech companies of all sizes. One future
employer likely will be Stereotaxis, a fledgling medical device
company and recent incubator graduate that has moved into CORTEX,
the state-of-the-art facility equipped with everything from
wet labs to vibration-resistant flooring. Another already is
Monsanto, which is involved in everything from biofuel development
to engineering better-tasting, healthier, pest- and drought-resistant
crops.
Among the scores of corporate and civic leaders helping to shape
the future of biotech is Dr. Robb Fraley, executive vice president
and chief technology officer at Monsanto, and generally considered
the “father of modern agriculture biotechnology.”
“We have so many of the fundamental elements to foster something
bigger than the sum of our parts, the BioBelt—and perhaps more
importantly—to then see it thrive,” Fraley says. “The confluence
of our region’s universities, public and private institutions,
investment dollars, and willingness to work together have been
the ideal recipe for success.”
Success tends to generate its own gravity, which has moved the
region fully into the global spotlight.
“St. Louis has made more progress in its implementation of a
plant and life sciences strategy than just about any other region
of the country, has staked its claim as the leading center for
plant sciences and is becoming a major center for the life sciences.”
This is not simple boosterism, it was the conclusion of the
national research think tank, Battelle, in a 2005 evaluation.
Just in the last few years the life sciences have made great
headway, as exemplified by progress at Pfizer, where researchers
are focusing on discovering medicines to treat diseases that
cause inflammation and on developing complex biotherapeutic
medicines. New York-based Pfizer gained local laboratories when
it acquired Pharmacia Corp. in 2003.
As prime movers in the effort pulled together, individual companies
and institutions have benefited, but an eye toward the greater
good spurred the formation of organizations such as Innovate
St. Louis, an outgrowth of the Technology Gateway Alliance of
the regional chamber.
The strength of the plant sciences here derives in no small
part from the Missouri Botanical Garden, one of the best such
institutions in the world. Its director, Dr. Peter Raven, travels
the globe to teach, to research—and to learn.
“We are one of the very few institutions in the world that can
deal effectively with plants around the world, their variation,
and their characteristics; by providing such an active base
of knowledge,” says Raven. “Bill Danforth’s leadership has been
great, and we need to keep focused to maintain great achievement
into the future.”
Raven emphasizes that an important next step in the evolution
of plant science is the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
(yes, yet another Danforth. Up to now, anyone not too familiar
with the Show-Me State may only have heard of John Danforth,
former U.S. Senator from Missouri and former United Nations
Ambassador).
Raven points out that, under the direction of Roger Beachy,
the Center has “built an outstanding research group, and the
incubator facilities have developed wonderfully well. Now we
all have developed an exciting place for research, and we should
continue recruiting all over the country to build our center
better.”
Long before the debate over global warming and skyrocketing
gas prices became so shrill, and partisan, biofuels were under
development here. On the east bank of the Mississippi, much
progress already has been made at the National Corn-to-Ethanol
Research Center (NCERC). Jim McLaren, president of Strathkirn,
created a biofuel “road map” for the Center for Evergreen Energy
(CE2) as the first step to make St. Louis a regional hub for
biofuel technology. The roadmap and the new Center were established
through a civic partnership of the Danforth Center and the RCGA.
Whether helping to develop renewable fuel sources or to combat
cancer and diabetes, more companies are able to emerge as a
result of the BioGenerator, civicly-funded commercialization
center which allows an idea to move through to proof of concept.
It’s safe to say that even the most altruistic of angel investor
has hopes for some sort of return.
So do environmentally responsible corporations, who have to
answer both to the court of public opinion and their boards
of directors.
Suffice it to say, it’s an exciting time to be in St. Louis,
cultivating this particular field of dreams—it expands beyond
the horizon to encircle the globe.
A lot of hard work has made the dream a reality, says Fraley.
“It took the right people working together to build this area’s
reputation as the place to do premier science, then take that
science to the next step—be it seed sold to farmers, capabilities
sold to customers or pills sold to patients.”
What can St. Louis expect in the future?
“I think we’ll see continued improvement of the successes we’ve
seen to date, and then the broadening of the benefits that biotechnology
can offer,” Fraley predicts. “Being in the biotech industry
today is like being in the computer industry in the 1950s—it’s
just the tip of the iceberg.”
Danforth is proud of the progress made to date, and very optimistic.
With a caveat: greenhouse gases.
“We really do have a crisis with petroleum and a buildup of
CO2 in the atmosphere,” he said. “Something needs to be done,
and it’s wonderful to go to work on it.”
Rhetoric about progress is not progress. That is, St. Louis
is not just talking the biotech talk. We’re walking the walk.
Even the most brilliant scientist is shouting in the wilderness
if he or she hasn’t the support of the financial, intellectual
and civic community. In the St. Louis BioBelt, she has all this,
and more. So does he.
“The real hope is science,” says Danforth. “Science is just
organized human ingenuity.”
