Florida’s biotech hub is burgeoning

Driven by state support, the growing presence of major world class research institutes, and other fuel, Florida rode the fast ramp to become a major player in the biotech arena.

A few years back, an economic development group in South Florida asked biotech serial entrepreneur Max Wallace how to create a vibrant biotech hub like the Research Triangle’s in North Carolina. “Start 20 years ago,” Wallace told them. It’s not going to take them that long.

Several factors have accelerated Florida’s growing prominence in the biotech industry. Sena Black, senior vice president of marketing and information with Florida Enterprise, tells TechJournal South that the influx of major West Coast research organizations has stimulated growth.

“Scripps was the first one,” she says. Not only did it help attract other research institutes, it also sparked the growth of “homegrown companies.” Pre-Scripps, Black says, “there were fewer than 30, and now we have more than 140 and growing in terms of things we can identify as biotech without even talking about life sciences, which is much bigger for Florida.”

The Scripps Research Institute, lured with $310 million in state incentives, opened a 40,000 square foot research facility on the Jupiter campus of Florida Atlantic University in 2004.

From Bench to Bedside

Enterprise Florida’s Sena Black notes that Florida has a substantial infrastructure to support life science and biotech development in the state.

It boasts 11 public and 29 independent colleges and universities, which spent more than $700 million on basic and applied life science research in 2004, resulting in more than 200 invention disclosures and 130 patents. Twelve of the universities have active technology transfer programs.

Incubators and research parks offer developing companies the support services and wet lab space needed. The University of Central Florida’s Technology Incubator in Orlando was a finalist for tech incubator of the year in 2004, while the Sid Martin Biotechnology Development incubator in Gainesville was a finalist in 2007.

Sid Martin companies have raised $90 million in equity investments and attracted more than $54 million in grants. In a national survey by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the incubator ranked first in the amount of intellectual property licensed to commercial use.

Centers of Excellence Exert Pull

Black notes that the state’s initial investment of $30 million in Centers of Excellence paid off well enough for it to invest an additional $100 million. “We now have four life science Centers of Excellence.” They include centers focused on nanobiotechnology, medicines from the sea, and regenerative health. The Centers, like the major research institutes, exert “a pull” that helps create clusters, Black says.

Florida has a number of business-friendly tax laws that many startups and large, established biotech and pharmaceutical firms alike consider attractive. It has no sales tax on R&D equipment, no state personal income tax, no corporate income tax on limited partnerships, or subchapter S-Corporations, no sales tax on purchases of raw materials incorporated in a final product for resale, and others.

Black notes that the state’s top teaching hospitals—a first class health system is important to Florida’s large retired population—is also important to drug developers who need them to hold clinical trials of experimental new treatments. The state’s large, diverse population is similarly attractive to companies recruiting for clinical trials.

“Those are all critical factors in why life sciences are flourishing here,” Black says. “From research and development to clinical trials, from bench to bedside,” she says, Florida has what the industry needs for the “whole life cycle of drug discovery.”

In fact, by 2006, Ernst & Young ranked Florida as a top ten state for biotechnology, although Black notes that the lines between the life sciences, biotech, pharma, medical devices and healthcare are blurring. Medical devices sometimes carry therapeutics (such as drug-coated stents), she points out.

Looking ahead, Black sees Florida as particularly strong in areas where life sciences, information technology, nanotechnology, and other areas are converging. The state’s strengths include a sub-sector in regenerative health biotech, which developed around the Evelyn F. & William L. McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida. The Institute’s “regeneration project” seeks treatments for human brain diseases and other ailments by probing the secrets of creatures with amazing powers of regeneration such as salamanders, newts, starfish and flatworms.

Spin-offs and startups in the sector include Regeneration Technologies Inc., which now employs more than 450 people, NeuroPoetix and AxoGen Inc., all of which are working on treatments that repair and regenerate peripheral nerves to treat brain and degenerative disorders. Elsewhere in Florida, NeoCytex Technologies in Orlando and 3i (Implant Innovations Inc.) in Palm Beach Gardens are also developing regenerative health products.

The state is also a hotbed for marine biotechnology research and a growing biodefense sub-sector. The University of South Florida’s Center for Biological Defense is one of the first of its kind nationally and encompasses a network of universities in the state.

Black says, “Florida is headed where the biotech industry is going, not where it has been.”