Fueling South Florida's biotech boom
BYLINE: MARTHA BRANNIGAN, mbrannigan@MiamiHerald.com
Dr. Pascal J. Goldschmidt took charge in April as senior vice president of medical affairs and dean of the University of Miami's Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine.
His mandate -- quickly elevate UM's medical school to a preeminent institution.
Goldschmidt, formerly chairman of the department of medicine at Duke University, wasted little time. He recently executed a brain raid on his former employer. The take -- the bulk of Duke's Center for Human Genetics.
That includes Dr. Jeffery Vance and Dr. Margaret Pericak-Vance, a married couple that leads the team, and some 20 other researchers. The Vances -- prominent researchers who uncovered genes linked to diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and macular degeneration -- will launch the Miami Institute of Human Genomics and a planned Department of Human Genetics.
Goldschmidt -- a cardiologist who himself has done extensive research in genomics and cell therapy -- is in the catbird seat. He's heading UM's medical school through a period of major expansion when it's flush with new funding from donors. Most prominently, the family of the late Leonard Miller, founder of Lennar, pledged $100 million to the school in December 2004.
Besides the Duke recruitment, Goldschmidt has lured major medical researchers from institutions including Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and UCLA. And he continues on the prowl at top-notch centers.
Over a Diet Coke and a mini Milky Way bar in his campus office, Goldschmidt, a Belgian native who has quickly embraced Miami, talked about the school of medicine's ambitious expansion in the hot field of genomics.
Q: Have you been banned from Duke's campus in Durham, N.C.?
A: In the academic world, you don't lose friends because you recruit people away. Nobody wants to lose people, but it's an open market. What's important is what's being done for humanity. I'm not saying nobody is upset at me. I talked to the president of Duke, and he was very well with what I was doing.
It was an opportunity that would be difficult to replicate. If there was a major recruiting of scientists across the United States, who would it be? That group was the most important and relevant group I could bring to South Florida and the University of Miami School of Medicine.
Q: How did you lure the team here?
A: It's not particularly their personal compensation that's at stake. Miami is an expensive city, if you take into account the cost of living and real estate. But the compensation is not what makes a difference. It's the incredible opportunity to have a substantial institution for the performance of genomic work in every important discipline. With the opportunity to recruit the entire team, the scaling up is really what is fascinating in the offer we provided. Here, someone who was the leader of a lab at Duke will be the leader of a center. The leader of a study will be the leader of a lab.
Also, the existing presence here of a leading group of researchers in diabetes, a leading group in eyes, a leading group in cancer, in spinal injuries was important. The openness with which collaboration is possible among researchers in such a setting is perhaps the most attractive aspect.
And scientists like to be in a nice part of the country if given the option.
Q: What does the financial side of this venture look like?
A: The initial investment is in excess of $10 million. Without the Miller gift, I could not have started this project. This is exactly what the Miller family wanted to happen.
To get everyone in the genomics program [at Duke], we are seeking additional funds. A key partner is the state of Florida. The researchers have funding from the National Institutes of Health, and those funds will stay with the researchers.
Q: At its core, what can genomics research do?
A: This is the future of medicine. It's really transferring the human genome project -- where we learned the total makeup of genes and the variance from one individual to the next -- and transferring that into tools important for patient treatment.
Genomics technologies allow us not only to look at the susceptibility to disease based on a gene pool but also allow us to understand how environment has modified that susceptibility. Instead of the traditional risk profile of coronary heart disease, instead of saying you have a one in 10 or a one in 100 chance of getting the disease, we will be able to say very specifically what the risk is. And it's not just medical curiosity. We can actually do something about it. I think over the next five years, you'll see an explosion in the applications of this in medicine. There are already a number of tests being deployed.
As a medical school, it's very important that physicians of the 21st century will have access to this research. So having it in South Florida has a big impact on the entire medical school.
Q: South Florida hasn't succeeded in becoming a Mecca for biotechnology. Do you think that is changing in a substantive way so that the region will have a critical mass of research and applied science?
A: High tech has been one of the priorities. There is an interesting alignment of the stars in South Florida. The state is making efforts to bring in groups of investors to South Florida -- and other parts of the state -- with investment in the range of hundreds of million of dollars. There are established groups. Scripps Research Institute is coming, Burnham Institute, and there are more coming, by the way, still in the pipeline.
One area that's critical but not really represented in South Florida is the area of genetics and genomics. These are the early building blocks, but 10 years from now when we look back, South Florida will be a very different place in its economic development.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of biotech companies come to South Florida. These people produce a ton of intellectual property, and you will get licensing companies and others.