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Eley, Guild, Hardy & Cooke Douglass Farr Lemons PA
delivering programming and preliminary design for the Biotechnical Research Park.

Northsidesun / Jack Mazurak

Jackson, MS January 15, 2010. A biotech research park that University of Mississippi Medical Center leaders plan to build at the old farmers market in Jackson will pump tens of millions into the state’s economy and could employ up to 1,500 people.

At the same time, the medical center plans to use up to $13.5 million in federal funding in a separate project to finish the laboratory build-out on the Arthur C. Guyton Research Center’s top three floors. That work will help create more research jobs.

Construction on the Mississippi Biotechnology Research Park’s first building could start in January 2011. Plans call for a 75,000-square-foot laboratory and office structure. The park will be located on 25 acres the state granted UMMC near the intersection of Woodrow Wilson Avenue and West Street.

The medical center already has received $13.8 million for the park through the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, funded through an omnibus bill. That money will pay for demolition and start of construction.

“This is innovation-based economic development,” Dr. David Dzielak, associate vice chancellor for strategic research alliances, said of the planned park and the estimated 1,500 jobs it could create over the next 10 to 20 years. “These are jobs that are higher paying and high skills oriented.”

In the long run, the park could house a parking garage and five buildings with a total of 400,000 square feet for private-company research, business incubator space, homes for medical center spin-off companies and technology-transfer programs.

The park likely will be a not-for-profit organization directed by a board that includes medical center leaders, park managers and possibly executives from anchor businesses.

In the coming months, Dzielak said UMMC leadership hopes to enroll other entities for the project, including the city of Jackson and the Mississippi Development Authority.

“We’re going to partner with as many state and local agencies as we can. We want to get buy-in to make this successful because really what we’re creating is a tremendous economic-development opportunity for the city,” he said.

“The public-private environment offers the most attractive situation for technology innovation that you could possibly design,” said Dr. H. Randall Goldsmith, president and CEO of the Mississippi Technology Alliance.

The alliance, a nonprofit economic development organization, fosters growth of start-up technology business, connects promising companies with investor capital, backs work-force education and helps existing industries modernize.

“Anywhere at any time you have leading technology that you can put in the hands of enlightened entrepreneurs, that changes the economy. Research parks put people in close proximity with that technology,” Goldsmith said.

UMMC could see financial benefits by backing new businesses from within its own ranks. Universities commonly help cover a company’s start-up costs or pay licensing fees and receive a percent stake in the company in return.

If the company takes off, the university can benefit from royalties, licensing, sale of the company or through stock ownership if it goes public. UMMC already has deals with faculty-founded companies, including one start-up that hopes to target cancerous tumors with a combination of heat and a specially designed micro drug-delivery system.

The park’s initial plan should be complete in November. Then comes more detailed planning on laying out the building based on its intended use. The design could begin in January. “We’ll have to get cost estimates on tearing down the existing structures and building infrastructure for the new building,” Dzielak said. Continued build-out will take more funding, he said. But as long as the first building gets leased, the finances make good sense. Using federal, state and local funds for the majority of construction costs will let the park leadership open with a paid-off building, or one nearly so. Rent money from the first building can go toward park maintenance and funding for the next building. And the pattern repeats.

On a tour in May of university-linked parks in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, Dzielak saw what are known as mixed-use parks: ones that combine university research and development space, incubator office and lab space for start-ups and anchor-tenant space for more mature private companies. That’s the likely mold for UMMC’s research park, he said. Dr. John Hall, associate vice chancellor for research, said the park can serve multiple purposes.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to develop our technology-transfer programs at UMMC. It will help us build partnerships with businesses and it will improve the use of that area,” Hall said.

Funding for the Guyton building will finish the top three floors, bringing more labs and offices for cancer and obesity research. “Those floors will go to addressing significant health issues in the state,” Dzielak said.

UMMC received $5.5 million from the Heath Resources and Services Administration for the project. Plus there’s a possible additional $8 million awaiting congressional approval, he said.

The fifth floor and its 20,000 square feet will go to obesity research. The plans coincide with groundwork for the Center for Excellence in Obesity and Metabolic Disease Research. Fund-raising for the center and a national search for a director are now under way.

Hall’s research into obesity-related hypertension and cardiovascular disease is a cornerstone of the new center.

Fat secretes a hormone called leptin that acts on the brain to suppress appetite and stimulate energy expenditure in the muscles. As people become obese, the brain becomes resistant to some of the effects of leptin.

“As obesity develops, increased production of leptin by the fat raises your blood pressure but not your energy expenditure and effectiveness of glucose use, and it doesn’t suppress your appetite effectively,” Hall said.

By knocking out certain genes that control synthesis of specific proteins in the brain, Hall’s lab has shown they can block independently the signaling systems of leptin for blood pressure, metabolic rate, and appetite.

“We’re trying to understand the basic physiologic mechanisms that go wrong in obesity, leading to high blood pressure and impaired ability of leptin to control appetite and metabolism,” Hall said. “A lot of people think diet and exercise when they hear obesity. But there’s so much we don’t yet understand about the metabolic functions and why people have so much trouble losing weight.”

His study is a part of a larger program-project grant, funded by the National Institutes of Health, “Cardiovascular Dynamics and their Controls,” that building namesake Dr. Guyton began 41 years ago. Hall has been the grant’s principal investigator for the past 21 years.

The building’s sixth and seventh floors will go to cancer research, an initiative tied to the UMMC Cancer Institute. One of the goals of Dr. Lucio Miele, institute director, is hiring 40 to 50 investigators.

More researchers mean more money brought into the local and state economy. UMMC leaders figure every dollar invested in research returns four to five times its value to Mississippi.

“We’re talking about recruiting people for these research slots who would come with research funding of their own. They’ll come in with grad students and lab techs, maybe five people each, they’ll live in the community, pay taxes, buy car tags and spend their income here,” Dzielak said.

“These are going to be highly educated people, they’ll demand better for their students and their children. These are the kinds of people you want living in your community. They’ll help the tide come up and everyone can benefit from that.”