Born nearly two and a half years ago, after a $1 billion state investment including a $40.4 million initial contribution to MSU, the Life Sciences Corridor is growing up.
The corridor stretches from Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, through MSU and the University of Michigan to Detroit’s Wayne State University. It is intended to make the state a global center for life sciences, research and business development.
Funding for the corridor comes for Michigan’s $8.1 billion portion of the 1998 tobacco settlement between the nation‘s tobacco companies and 46 state attorneys general.
Gov. John Engler said a more-than-$600-million expansion on U-M’s campus by drug company Pfizer Inc., which was announced Tuesday, will help “make the Life Sciences Corridor vision a reality.”
Meanwhile, MSU is establishing the Michigan Center for Structural Biology and has 14 other ongoing corridor-related research projects.
“When the governor proposed (the corridor), he is looking at the four institutions working together, building on their stretches and working as one unit,” said Matt Resch, a spokesman for Engler. “We are looking at ways to help Michigan State.”
Most of MSU’s corridor-related research, which ranges from studying living cell functions to creating a foodborne-diseases detection system, got underway this summer.
Paul Bartlett, an adjunct professor for MSU’s National Food Safety and Toxicology Center, is developing an Internet database to alert the public about stores and food products that make people ill as part of the corridor’s projects.
“If you just deal with the identified cases, you are dealing with just the tip of the iceberg,” Bartlett said. “The whole point is if we can identify more disease clusters, it gives us an opportunity for disease control measures.”
While the corridor is intended to create lifesaving technology, Resch said the corridor is also intended to stimulate the economy. But he said a slowing state economy could potentially slow funding to the initiative.
“The governor is very supportive of the program, but with revenue shortfalls, he will have some tough decisions to make,” Resch said. “Clearly the Life Sciences Corridor is something the governor feels Michigan’s economy can build on for the next generation.”
Terry May, MSU’s director of research development, said a number of state agencies and corporations such as The Dow Chemical Co. are involved with MSU’s corridor projects.
“It is a new way of doing business in and around the state,” May said. “The (corridor) universities are beginning to realize it is very costly for each place to duplicate everything. We are teaming together to buy this equipment.”
May said the new technology will be made available to companies across the state.
In addition to their involvement with the Life Sciences Corridor, U-M has established a Life Sciences Institute in correlation with the statewide project.
“One of the things that the corridor wants to promote is research that leads to a more diversified economy - taking research findings and converting them into products, like drugs,” said Jack Dixon, co-director of the Life Sciences Institute at U-M.
“Having a partner like Pfizer to help with those things is a very positive factor.”
More than $63 million in tax cuts over the next 20 years, including a $10.7 million reduction of the State Education Tax, helped to attract Pfizer to expand its Ann Arbor location.
“(U-M is) fortunate to have someone (such as Pfizer) whose research interests and some long-terms goals overlap with ours,” Dixon said.
