Group forms to push biotech in Orlando area

BYLINE: Harry Wessel, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.

Apr. 27--THE NEW, Semiofficial Bioorlando -- a group of influential business people pushing Orlando as a burgeoning biotechnology cluster -- makes its debut next weekend at the international BIO 2007 conference in Boston.

The Orlando group, which partners with Enterprise Florida, the Florida High Tech Corridor Council and the University of Central Florida, will be represented at BIO 2007 by John Fremstad of the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission.

The new group, which does not officially launch until June 20, will be chaired by Lars Houmann, chief executive officer of Florida Hospital. The four-day BIO 2007 conference opens May 6.

Twin announcements last year -- that the University of Central Florida would start a medical school, and the Burnham Institute for Medical Research would open an East Coast laboratory in Orlando -- have generated interest nationwide in the area's potential as a biotech center.

UCF's med school and Burnham's lab are both expected to open in 2009 in Orlando's Lake Nona community as part of a planned "medical city" that will also include an undergraduate life-sciences college, a VA hospital, and a research facility jointly operated by Burnham and the University of Florida.

Harry Wessel can be reached at hwessel@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5506.

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