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High praise for biotech industry in Colorado-CU’s Fitzsimons campus ‘on its way’ to top 10 in research

AURORA – The man in charge of billion of dollars in grants for the National Institutes of Health lauded Colorado on Thursday, saying no state in the nation has "put together the firepower – intellectual and physical – as I see here today."

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the NIH, the main source of funding for medical research, said the University of Colorado’s Fitzsimons campus "is on its way" to breaking into the top 10 nationally. The campus aims to combine medical education and private-public biotech research.

It was just what Gov. Bill Owens and education and medical leaders in the state wanted to hear. They are hoping that biotechnology and the Colorado Bioscience Park Aurora can help lift Colorado out of the economic doldrums and make it a leader in medical research.

Zerhouni was keynote speaker at Colorado NIH Research Day at the CU Health Sciences Center’s new Fitzsimons campus.

CU and the city of Aurora acquired the site of the former Fitzsimons Army Medical Center at no cost from the U.S. government in 1995. CU officials say the 578 acres offers a chance to build a 21st century education, research and biotech park like no other in the nation.

To stem health care costs and keep America the leader in medical research, the nation needs private-public partnerships such as those being established at CU between government, academia and private business, Zerhouni said.

"There are not many places in the nation that have had the wisdom and vision to invest like this, in the way it needs to be done," he said.

Zerhouni, a former surfer, said the difference between a good surfer and a bad surfer is "picking the right wave."

"You’ve picked the right wave, and done it wonderfully here with boldness and vision," he said.

He noted that CU’s NIH funding has doubled in a few years to more than $140 million a year, and at a rate faster than most other academic teaching hospitals. UCHSC ranks eighth in NIH funding among the nation’s 125 medical schools.

His words left Colorado leaders confident that the state will remain a big target for federal research dollars.

Owens was cheered by Zerhouni’s words and by news this week that the state legislature moved forward a bill that would speed the construction of the education buildings at Fitzsimons.

The state House Financial Committee unanimously approved $240 million in certificates of participation that could get those buildings finished by 2007 instead of 2012. That would help businesses’ concerns about a split campus and bring more biotech partners to the Fitzsimons campus, Owens predicted.

The Fitzsimons campus is expected to employ 34,800 workers and add $60 million yearly to state and local tax revenues by 2010.

Zerhouni said medical research is critical because the best managed care in the world will only cut America’s health care costs about 15 percent – which would be gobbled up in one year of medical care inflation.

"The only hope is research and new discoveries," Zerhouni said. With enough research dollars, genetic scientists can leap ahead in cell-signaling work, finding common therapies for cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other killers.

"We need to get orders of magnitude more effective in attacking diseases," he said. "We need an all-out assault to interfere with diseases’ progression."

By understanding disease at the genetic and molecular level, researchers will discover ways to, at the least, slow the development of a disease, he said. And with Alzheimer’s, one of the many age-related diseases soon to visit the baby boomers, a five-year delay will cut in half the number of people afflicted.

"A team approach, with private-public partnerships like CU is doing, is key," Zerhouni said. "A single lab can’t tackle these problems. A government-academic-industry partnership isn’t just something that would be nice to have. It’s something we have to do."

http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/technology/article/0,1299,DRMN_49_1744527,00.html

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