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State's billion-dollar biotech question:
Who gets how much?

By Stephen Heuser, Globe Staff  |  June 20, 2007

Six weeks after Governor Deval L. Patrick captured national attention with a proposal to spend $1 billion on biomedical research, one sticky question still hangs over the plan: Who will actually get the money?

Biotechnology companies, research universities, and nonprofit groups are all poised to reap rewards from the governor's Life Science Initiative , which would dispense an average of $100 million a year for a decade. Beyond that eye-catching figure, though, lie very few details.

Tomorrow morning Patrick will bring together a group of about 70 state life-science leaders to help start writing the rules for how the state's $1 billion would be spent.

The gathering, scheduled for 8 a.m. in Cambridge at the Charles Hotel, will include representatives from universities including Harvard and the University of Massachusetts; executives from top local biotechnology companies such as Genzyme Corp. and Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.; and officials from hospitals and nonprofits.

It takes place at a key moment for the governor's strategy: After winning broad support for his proposal from the industry and legislators, his team has begun huddling to write laws and craft a spending plan that can win support of the House and Senate.

The plan Patrick unveiled at the BIO International Convention last month "e merged from discussions with a broad group, and we are going back to that same group to say 'OK, now it's time to come up with the details of the program,' " said Daniel O'Connell , the governor's housing and economic development secretary, whose office is co-hosting the meeting.

Tomorrow's invitation-only meeting echoes a series of private sessions the Patrick administration held with life-science leaders in March and April when first formulating the biotech plan. The result, announced at the BIO International Convention in Boston on May 8, was a menu of ideas that ranged from a pioneering stem-cell bank run by the University of Massachusetts to tax breaks for corporations.

But all those ideas need to be written into law before the money can start flowing. The governor also needs to persuade the House and Senate to find money in the budget and to authorize $500 million in bonds.

Patrick has won praise from life-science leaders for the inclusiveness of his approach to building and luring a competitive industry. But as his plans become more concrete, letting biotech leaders suggest ways to give cash to their own industry raises potential conflicts of interest, said Steve Poftak , director of research at the conservative Pioneer Institute , a public-policy think tank in Boston.

"This is a very specialized area in which you need a lot of expertise, but a lot of the people with expertise stand to be beneficiaries," he said. "You have to be careful that you don't get a situation where the people making the policy become the recipients of the program."

O'Connell said the breadth of invitees would help prevent any one group, such as teaching hospitals or venture capitalists, from wielding undue influence.

Another challenge for the Patrick administration is getting the Legislature on board. Senate President Therese Murray and House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi both stood with Patrick at the BIO convention, pledging their support for the broad outlines of the proposal. Both have been invited to tomorrow's meeting. Murray will not attend, said her spokeswoman, because the Senate is in formal session. As of last night, DiMasi had not yet decided whether he could come, said his spokesman.

Another question about the plan revolves around the Life Sciences Center , a relatively new state board. Created by the Romney administration last summer to give away $10 million in life-science booster money, the center would oversee much of the spending in the Patrick proposal, approving or rejecting applications for money. It currently has only five members, and its executive director, appointed by Romney, was forced to resign two weeks ago.

So far the center has made only one grant -- about $200,000 to a University of Massachusetts think tank to study the state's life-science work force. UMass president Jack Wilson , one of five board members of the Life Science Center, abstained from the June 7 vote.

Andrea Estes of the Globe staff contributed to this story. Stephen Heuser can be reached at sheuser@globe.com.