Texas Puts $50M into Gene Institute

Coming off the heels of the state legislature's approval of a new Emerging Technologies Fund (see the June 13 issue of the Digest), Gov. Rick Perry announced last Saturday that Texas would provide a $50 million grant to establish the Texas Institute for Genomic Medicine (TIGM). The Emerging Tech Fund remains untouched, however, as the $50 million will be taken out of the original $295 million appropriated for the governor's discretionary Texas Enterprise Fund.

The nonprofit TIGM is a collaborative effort between the Texas A&M University System and Lexicon Genetics, a private technology firm located in Woodland, Texas, north of Houston. Lexicon will receive $35 million of the grant to create two copies of its library of 350,000 mouse stem cell lines for use by TIGM to identify new drugs for combating human diseases.

One copy of the library will be housed in remodeled facilities at the Texas A&M University System Health Science Center Institute of Biosciences and Technology, and another copy will be located at a new research and commercialization facility to be built at Texas A&M in College Station. When complete, the new library is expected to be the world’s largest collection of mouse embryonic stem cells that have been engineered for the study of gene function, allowing researchers to identify those genes that offer the most promise for future drug development.

The new institute is expected to create 5,000 new jobs over the next decade with an average salary of $60,000, according to a press statement. One-third of the jobs will be created directly at Lexicon, reports a July 17 Houston Chronicle article, while the balance is to be spun out of university research supported by the grant.

More information is available at: http://www.tamhsc.edu/news/archives/001914.php