Rockefeller U. Sizing Up Area for Research Lab

By Stephen Pounds, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

Jan. 13–Rockefeller University, one of the top 100 recipients of federal science dollars in the country and a center with connections to The Scripps Research Institute and old-money Palm Beach, is considering an expansion into Palm Beach County.

Kelly Smallridge, president of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County, confirmed what one source called “a flirtation” by county and state officials with New York-based Rockefeller that started last year.

“I would put it in the ‘open discussion’ category. It hasn’t been ruled in and hasn’t been ruled out,” Smallridge said Thursday.

A Rockefeller spokesman did not return calls seeking comment.

Rockefeller and Germany’s Max Planck Society are among seven large-scale outfits that are looking for incentive dollars to locate a research center here, Smallridge said. Much of the biotechnology growth up to now has been confined to smaller start-up firms such as Xcovery Inc., a company formed last year out of science licensed from Scripps Florida in Jupiter.

“The bigger deals — the ones that are larger in physical size, with more employees and greater sophistication in technology and innovation — are asking for incentives,” Smallridge said.

He declined to name the other five organizations or detail what Rockefeller is asking from the state and county. But it is already ranked 74th among universities, hospitals and other research institutions in backing from the National Institutes of Health, the government’s primary arm of medical research. It received 169 grants and $80.6 million in fiscal 2005.

By comparison, Scripps, based in Jupiter and La Jolla, Calif., is ranked 26th, and the University of Florida is 52nd.

Rockefeller scientists have won 23 Nobel Prizes since the teaching and research school opened on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 1901.

Capitalist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller formed the medical research organization after his grandson died of scarlet fever. At first, what was then called the Rockefeller Institute awarded grants to study, among other health concerns, bacterial contamination in New York City’s milk supply.

By 1910, Rockefeller scientists had founded the nation’s first hospital devoted exclusively to experimental medicine.

Its scientists are credited with discovering in 1911 that cancer can be caused by a virus and in 1944 that DNA is the basic material of heredity. They confirmed the connection between cholesterol and heart disease during the 1950s and developed methadone as a maintenance drug for people addicted to heroin in the 1960s.

In the 1990s, they helped to create a combination of “cocktail” drugs as therapy for AIDS patients.

Two prominent Nobel laureates from Rockefeller are on the scientific advisory board of The Scripps Research Institute.

Gunter Blobel, the 1999 Nobel winner in medicine, discovered how chemical “ZIP codes” transport proteins within parts of living cells. Paul Greengard, one of three Nobel winners in medicine the following year, uncovered how cells respond once dopamine signals are received in the brain. His work has contributed to the understanding of many brain diseases.

The university also has Palm Beach connections. At least two Rockefeller trustees, billionaire businessman David Koch and buyout specialist Henry R. Kravis, have homes on the island.

Rockefeller is the kind of organization Palm Beach County should try to attract, said Sheridan “Sherry” Snyder, an entrepreneur who recently set up shop in West Palm Beach with a company developing a treatment to block cancer-causing enzymes, using research by Scripps chemist Chris Liang.

Rockefeller’s hospital admits only patients who are participating in clinical trials, building on basic research findings by its 200 research and clinical scientists at the university’s 74 labs.

“I’d like to see the clinical aspect beefed up to complement the research capability,” Snyder said. “I don’t think just research will expand employment here.” She said clinical study “brings in more money because it brings in more patients.”

The difficulty in attracting large biotech outfits such as Rockefeller is the lack of job-incentive money available at the state level. Last year, Florida’s Innovation Incentive Fund was tapped for $200 million to bring three research organizations to the state, including the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, which is building a laboratory in Port St. Lucie.

Now the fund is depleted.

But Erin Isaac, a spokeswoman for Gov. Charlie Crist, said Crist is weighing support for another round of incentive money in the legislature’s next regular session, although she didn’t give specifics.

Either way, the other major research entity, the Max Planck Society, continues to forge ahead with negotiations with the state for an incentive package to expand its already huge presence in Munich and elsewhere in Germany.

The society’s senate gave President Peter Gruss the go-ahead late last year to meet with Florida officials on obtaining financial backing similar to other research operations such as Scripps, Torrey Pines and the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, which agreed last year to put a lab in Orlando after getting $155.3 million in state job-growth incentives.

Max Planck has 78 labs in Germany and three elsewhere in Europe. But it has no presence in the United States.

“This is one of the most prominent projects that we have proceeding. We have many collaborations with scientists at universities in the U.S., but this is a unique case,” said Max Planck spokesman Berndt Wirsing.

Staff researcher Angelica Cortez contributed to this story.

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