State will reap rewards from collaboration

September 21, 2005

This op-ed appeared Sept. 21 in the Miami Herald, Tallahassee Democrat and Gainesville Sun the week of Sept. 19.

By: Win Phillips
Win Phillips is vice president for research at the University of Florida, and UF’s liaison to Scripps Florida.

With Scripps Florida set to break ground at its Palm Beach County headquarters Friday (Sept. 23), the news from the fledgling biomedical research institute is promising.

Scripps has hired 159 full-time employees and 22 faculty members. Scientists at its temporary labs at Florida Atlantic University have applied for 17 patents. And last month Scripps inked its first collaboration with a corporate partner, the Seattle-based cancer therapeutics firm NeoRx, which will provide $2.5 million for a cancer study.

Progress has been so rapid that it has overshadowed another development: Growing collaborations between Scripps and Florida’s public universities.

Questions about the relationship between Scripps and universities have persisted since the institute was first announced nearly two years ago. Scripps and university leaders continue to mull formal arrangements including a joint biotech incubator, a shared research park and a university campus adjacent to Scripps.

But as these public discussions continue, there’s a key under-the-radar trend: Researchers at Florida’s universities are reaching out to newly arrived colleagues at Scripps, and vice versa, to do joint research, borrow each other’s high-tech equipment, educate graduate students and otherwise join hands.

This is important for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it provides early confirmation of the scientific health and relevance of the Scripps enterprise. For another, the budding collaborations lend support to one of the chief claims of Scripps backers: That, once established, the research institute will help boost the technology and biotechnology economy not only in Palm Beach County but all over Florida. After all, if researchers statewide have a hand in Scripps’ science, they and their communities will reap rewards in the cures, technologies and spin-off companies that result.

At the University of Florida, nearly three dozen researchers –from fields spanning biochemistry to medicinal chemistry to psychiatry to molecular genetics to ophthalmology — are teaming up with counterparts at Scripps.

It’s still very early, and some of the activity is limited to discussions, but a few researchers have taken things a step further. For example, UF’s Dennis Steindler, has put together a multimillion dollar grant proposal aimed at finding cures for Parkinson’s that includes Scripps researchers as informal participants. Scripps, says Steindler, has the technology and the expertise for so-called “high throughput” screening, or the testing of literally hundreds of thousands of potential new drug compounds. UF, meanwhile, has what may prove the winning candidates.

“It’s a perfect marriage,” says Steindler.

UF biochemist Rob McKenna is another researcher with an interest in Scripps. He’s tapping a Scripps robot to screen for conditions that make protein samples crystallize, a necessary step to his research on the molecular causes of malaria, glaucoma and other diseases. A good technician, McKenna says, can screen 24 samples in 20 minutes. The Scripps robot, by contrast, zips through 96 samples in 15 seconds. McKenna’s Scripps colleague, meanwhile, hopes to use UF’s extensive X-ray facilities.

“Obviously, this equipment costs a lot of money, so if we can help each other’s research, that’s where we’re going,” McKenna says.

Of course, there will be challenges to Scripps-university research collaborations, including issues surrounding ownership of patents and licenses tied to drug discoveries. But with any luck, administrators and lawyers overseeing these matters will be as creative and motivated as the scientists who made the discoveries. Indeed, Scripps’ organizational structure, which is light on administration and heavy on scientists, is designed to facilitate outside collaborations. And it’s important to remember that linkages aren’t limited to research. UF scientists are talking with Scripps counterparts about educational collaborations ranging from placing Scripps researchers on UF doctoral students’ committees to training UF students at Scripps labs.

All of this isn’t only to the benefit of researchers and students. Informal discussions, cross-disciplinary intermixing, chance meetings leading to the exchange of vital ideas – all of these are the meat and potatoes of good scientific inquiry.

From James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA, to William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, who built the first transistor, the resulting discoveries have had monumentally positive impacts. To be sure, economic development is one, as the story of Silicon Valley amply demonstrations. But more importantly, these and other discoveries have significantly improved people’s lives.

The unique and different strengths of North Carolina State University, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke have been key to the success of that state’s vaunted Research Triangle Park. There’s no reason Florida’s universities can’t play a similar role in ensuring Scripps’ success, and vice versa.