Biosciences scorecard: report finds Indiana one of the country's top three life-sciences states.

• Author: McKimmie, Kathy
• Position: Cover story

WHEN EVALUATING Indiana's life-sciences status, it might be useful to employ former New York City mayor Ed Koch's daily refrain, 'How'm I doing?" It was daily because he knew he needed to keep his finger on the pulse--things can change in a heartbeat. And with all 50 states and many other countries vying for a slice of the life-sciences pie, constant attention is a necessity.

Indiana's life-sciences movers and shakers take some comfort in the fact that the state ranked well in the "Growing the Nation's Bioscience Sector: State Bioscience Initiatives 2006" report issued in April by Battelle Memorial Institute and the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), an industry trade group. But they say there's no time to relax.

Indiana is one of the country's top three life-sciences states, according to the report, defined by number and concentration of life-sciences-related jobs. It made it into three out of the four industry subsectors: agricultural feedstock and chemicals, drugs and pharmaceuticals, and medical diagnostics, devices and equipment. The fourth subsector is research, testing and medical laboratories.

"There is only one state, New Jersey, that is a major player in all four," says August "Gus" Watanabe, chairman of BioCrossroads, a 4-year-old public-private initiative to help grow the life-sciences industry in Indiana. Watanabe is retired executive vice president of science and technology for Eli Lilly "I think we're actually doing pretty well, and probably have a lot more assets than even I realized." Connecticut also has specialization in three industry subsectors. Nine states have specialization in two, 25 in only one.

"We always do pretty well because we have a lot to start with," says David Johnson, president and CEO of BioCrossroads, "It's great and we love talking about it, but having what we have obligates us to do something about it. With blessings come obligations."

INDIANA'S ASSETS

Some of those longstanding assets in Indiana's life-sciences sector are well-known, including Eli Lilly, Dow AgroSciences, Roche Diagnostics, the Cook companies, world-class orthopedic device manufacturers in Warsaw, manufacturing sites for Baxter, Pfizer, Bayer and Boston Scientific, and universities with impeccable research reputations, including Indiana and Purdue universities and the University of Notre Dame. "Much of our work," says Johnson, "is to get companies and universities to work together land invest together."

While Indiana didn't make the cut in the research, testing and medical laboratories subsector in the BIO/Battelle report and may not have its share of discoveries, it enjoys a longstanding reputation in development and manufacturing. Not coincidentally, the latest in a string of new businesses for Cook Group in Bloomington--the world's largest privately held manufacturer of medical devices--is Cook Pharmica, a contract biopharmaceutical manufacturer with the tagline: Changing Your View on Outsourcing.

It's difficult and expensive for pharmaceutical companies to operate at top capacity when they may only use a line for three or four months of a year, or make only one batch a year, says Cook Pharmica CEO Jerry Arthur. "We can run a line for one product, then switch to another product. So we can keep a line running year-round."...