TAMPA - To the medical school dean at the University of South Florida, the future of health care lies in a big field about 165 miles south of Tampa, along the road from Naples to Immokalee.
It's a vision that started in Collier County, spread to a research lab in Maine, then attracted USF with an ambitious proposition: high-paying biomedical jobs, research breakthroughs and a foothold in the emerging practice of personalized medicine.
"It's about creating a national model for health care for the 21st century," medical dean Stephen Klasko said.
A vice president with the Maine institution, Mike Hyde, let his rhetoric fly higher: "We propose a kind of Manhattan Project for health care," he said, referring to the World War II enterprise that led to the atom bomb.
USF and the private, not-for-profit The Jackson Laboratory have agreed to work together in what they're calling a bioscience village near Naples. Jackson would build it, then devote itself to finding personalized, gene-based treatments for today's most threatening diseases: cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes.
"This is completely different from the way we deliver health care today," Hyde said. "It's a game-changer."
Manhattan Project
But game-changers, particularly Manhattan Project-style game-changers, are expensive. And the returns are uncertain.
To build and set up its Florida lab and treatment facility, Jackson says it needs at least $260 million, which it expects to get from state and Collier County taxpayers. It plans to raise $120 million for the first few years of operation.
The Legislature has approved $50 million for Jackson, with a promise of $80 million more in the next two years. It hasn't been so easy in Collier County, home to both wealthy retirees in Marco Island and farmworkers in Immokalee.
Jackson is promising high-tech jobs - about 7,000 in 20 years - and a chance for Collier to become nationally known for its bioscience innovation. But some residents question whether that chance is worth the $130 million they're expected to produce.
Who's right is hard to say, said Daniel Vorhaus, a lawyer specializing in genomics research for Robinson Bradshaw in Charlotte, N.C.
"All over the country, all over the world," health care institutes are rushing into genomics and personalized medicine, he said. "Everyone is competing for the same opportunity, for the same investment dollars, for the same business, for the same knowledge."
Some will succeed. Some won't.
"It's not always better to put $130 million into something as long term as personalized medicine," Vorhaus said. "But you don't want to lose sight of what you can do if you take a longer outlook."
What angers Naples lawyer Anthony Pires, a critic of the project, is that the Jackson effort was well down the road before the Collier County Commission began talking about it this summer.
"There's been a lot more going on than was reflected in the public record," Pires said.
Early work was secret
Tammie Nemecek, president of the Economic Development Council of Collier County, conceded that plans have been in the works for a while, but said there was no skullduggery involved.
She has been at the center of the effort from the start, about two years ago, when she attended a meeting organized by a prominent couple in Naples, Leslie and Rainey Norins.
Leslie Norins had worked with Jackson earlier in his career and, in retirement, he and his wife decided to raise money for the lab.
Nemecek said the fundraising presentation she attended "blew me away."
Jackson isn't one of the powerhouse biotech institutes such as Scripps, a California research institute that opened a much-sought-after branch in Palm Beach County last year. But it's well-respected for its efforts to unravel the genetic underpinnings of disease.
Established more than 80 years ago to study the role of heredity in cancer, it has created more than 5,000 strains of mice used around the world to test gene-based treatments.
After the presentation in 2008, Nemecek said, she approached Jackson representatives and told them, "You need to move here."
For years, Collier's economic developers have been working to bring biotech businesses to the county. It became a priority when the Florida real estate market collapsed.
But when she suggested it to the Jackson officials, they "looked at me like I had four heads."
They were trying to raise money for the Maine operation, she said. But as time passed, they talked more with local and state economic development officials, who assured them taxpayers would help them build in Florida.
The money would come from the state's Innovation Incentive Fund, created in 2006 to lure Scripps and other research companies to Florida.
The centerpiece of the Jackson incentives included a donation of 50 acres from Barron Collier Cos., which manages the vast Collier family land holdings. The company has donated hundreds of thousands of acres for parks and schools, so giving land to Jackson is consistent with its practices, spokeswoman Dolly Roberts said.
But the donation isn't all philanthropy.
"We want Jackson Labs," Roberts said.
What Collier Cos. gets
Collier Cos. plans to develop the land around the proposed research and clinic complex, which it envisions will include homes, schools, a hospital and several private biotech spin-off companies.
Also nearby is the town and campus of Ave Maria, developed and controlled by Collier and Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan.
With decades of experience in genetics, Jackson is perfectly placed to help lead the revolution in health care known today as personalized medicine, said Hyde, the vice president in Maine.
Personalized medicine is the practice of tailoring drug treatments to an individual, based on family history and genetics.
"It answers the question of why some people respond to treatment and some people don't," said Klasko, the USF dean.
"This isn't just a fad. It's real," lawyer Vorhaus said. "And it's extremely necessary. With the cost and limits of our health care system today, we really need to deliver medicine in a more efficient, less costly way."
Genetic tests are available for some diseases, such as breast cancer.
"We believe that in the next few years, it will be possible to develop very, very definitive tests based on your particular individual genomic profile," Hyde said. "Our ability to diagnose a disease when symptoms occur and treat it will all be transformed by this."
About the time Naples-area lawmakers were pushing through the bill to fund the Jackson project, word reached Klasko, USF's energetic medical school dean, who encourages entrepreneurial approaches to health care.
"We invited them down for a day," Klasko said. "They had no idea what we had."
USF throws hat in ring
They liked what they saw at USF Health's Byrd Alzheimer's Institute, where professors do basic research in neuroscience in the same building where clinicians work with patients.
"We're looking at a scenario (at Jackson) where USF and Jackson researchers would work side by side," Klasko said. "We could take basic research, translate that into drugs and translate that into clinical trials with humans."
He also envisions partnering with southwest Florida's Edison Community College and Florida Gulf Coast University to offer courses in gene-based health care, from genetic counseling to treatment.
Collier's Roberts said the company is considering additional land donations, possibly for a hospital.
But these ideas remain just that - ideas.
"We're very much at the conceptual stage" of working together, said USF's vice president for research, Karen Holbrook.
"We know we're going to have people on the ground in Collier, but at this point we don't know who or exactly what they'll do," she said.
USF and Jackson have signed a three-page collaboration agreement, but it doesn't include details of the relationship.
That kind of vagueness concerns Janet Vasey, a member of the Collier County Productivity Committee, which sized up the Washington Economic Group's report on Jackson's economic impact.
"They say they'll bring all these jobs, but they don't say exactly how," Vasey said. They say dozens of private biotech companies will relocate to be near Jackson, she said.
"We asked who? And we got no answer."
One company has announced plans to move to the biomedical village. That's California-based Athleticode, which uses genetic testing to identify whether someone is at risk for certain athletic injuries.
"We just have a problem with the rosy projections," Vasey said.
A big price tag
She and others have proposed that the county commission put the $130 million county allocation to a public vote. She also noted that the plan to raise the money with a bond issue means it will ultimately cost taxpayers about twice that much.
The commission voted down the proposal.
Jackson has submitted its proposal to Enterprise Florida, the state's economic development arm that has to sign off on the project, along with the state Office of Tourism and Economic Development, before Jackson can get money from the state.
After that, Collier County has 120 days to approve its $130 million share.
Hyde isn't worried.
"There's little doubt that this is going to happen," he said. "This is a smart investment."
People who question the project might not be happy over the next few years. They won't see much, except for some construction.
"We're not going to cure cancer or transform the economy tomorrow. That's not how this works," Hyde said.
"But my guess is that 10 to 15 years from now, people in Florida will be delighted that this investment was made."
Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at (813) 259-7834.
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