ON TARGET: Scripps Florida has already hired more than 150 scientists and supporting staff as called for in the state-approved incentives package.

With its first choice for a site in rural Palm Beach County bogged in environmental politics, the Scripps Research Institute shifted gears late last year and will try to build its biotech village at the Abacoa campus of Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter.

As the details of a new site deal are hammered out, Scripps is proceeding with a scientific effort that it has mustered largely out of the headlines -- building the backbone of a research effort in Florida that it expects to be a magnet for other research organizations, laboratories and spinoff companies.
Operating from temporary facilities at FAU, Scripps' 160 scientists, technicians and administrative staff are focusing on biomedical research, technology development and drug design. William E. Ray, Scripps vice president for external affairs, says the site issue has been "unremitting, but it is the scientists who make the case for Scripps -- not the site."

Ray says Scripps continues to meet the employment targets spelled out in the $369-million state financing package that helped induce Scripps, headquartered in La Jolla, Calif., to build a research facility in Florida. Meanwhile -- despite courting from other regions of Florida -- Scripps has cemented its commitment to Palm Beach County, where it's received $12 million in private donations. In November, Scripps Florida collaborated with Oxford University to host a major biotech conference in Palm Beach at which scientists from all over the world presented cutting-edge research on topics ranging from Alzheimer's disease to cancer. At the conference, Scripps also announced it was forming a biochemistry department that will encompass the California and Florida campuses; research will span questions in neurobiology, metabolic control, immunology and cancer biology.

Scripps' first promise to Florida was as a baseline for research and development. Its second was the biotechnology village that would lure other companies and venture capital -- finally putting the state on the biotech map. In November, after a federal judge halted construction of major roads and sewers for infrastructure around Scripps' Mecca Farms site near the Everglades due to environmental concerns, the Palm Beach County Commission urged Scripps to find a new place to build.

Until that biotech village is under way, say industry observers inside and outside the state, Florida won't realize the full promise of Scripps. "Scripps, its scientists and the quality of its research are a given. The question is what it will bring to Florida," says Gregory A. Nelson, head of Akerman Senterfitt's intellectual property division in West Palm Beach and a board member of BioFlorida, the state's biotechnology organization. "Scripps is a catalyst, and to the extent that the catalyst isn't there, it prolongs the formation of a biotech cluster in Florida."

DEFENDING THE NATION

Florida's biotech industry continues to lag in private investment and venture capital funding. But the sector has had a welcome infusion of dollars from federal defense and health agencies working to protect the nation from bioterrorism. The University of South Florida's Center for Biological Defense is a clearinghouse for anti-terrorism research going on throughout the state. A look at some of the work:

• At USF's Advanced Biosensors Lab, Daniel Lim is working on a transportable fiber optic biosensor system that can rapidly detect biological toxins in food, water, even people.
• At the University of Florida, Carlos Romero and Steven Benner are working on projects to manage exotic outbreaks -- deliberate or natural -- on the nation's animal herds.
• At the University of North Florida, Stuart J. Chalk is developing an "Aquatic Real-time Monitoring System," or ARMS, that constantly monitors public water-supply systems for bioterrorism agents.
• At Florida International University, Kelsey Downum is investigating whether some of the state's invasive plants -- notorious for their ability to resist attack by native parasites and pathogens -- may have properties that also resist certain bioterrorism threats as well as other emerging infectious diseases.

RUSSELL G. KERR

Person to Watch

RUSSELL G. KERR
Director, Center of Excellence in
Biomedical and Marine Biotechnology
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

Chemistry professor Russell G. Kerr, director of FAU's Center of Excellence in Biomedical and Marine Biotechnology, has spun off a new company called Nautilus Biosciences. Drug discovery from marine organisms is a major focus of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries these days, as several marine-derived chemicals complete successful clinical trials. But supply is a problem: The corals and sponges of the sea are limited resources. Nautilus has a $100,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a cell-culture method to produce in the lab a class of anti-inflammatory compounds now found only in marine organisms. If this Phase 1 grant is successful, Kerr hopes to land $750,000 more for Phase 2. To fathom the consequences of success, consider the cancer drug Taxol. When it was approved by the FDA, the only source of Taxol was to extract large quantities of bark from the Pacific yew tree. Florida State University chemist Robert Holton licensed a process to produce Taxol in the lab, making the cancer drug widely available -- and earning millions for himself and FSU.