Healthy growth ahead? Lafayette area is a hotbed for life sciences.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy
• Position: Focus - 45,000 new health and life-science jobs

Indiana stands to gain some 45,000 new health and life-science jobs in the next five years, the Indiana Health Industry Forum predicts. And that's just from existing industries. If the Lafayette area has its way, it will land a good number of those jobs.

It's well on its way, with longtime companies, expansions, startups and unprecedented support from Purdue University.

"We have an emerging life-science cluster, and that cluster has a great deal of growth opportunity'," says Mike Brooks, president of the community's economic-development group, Greater Lafayette Progress Inc. (GLPI). So significant is the community's growth in this area, GLPI sponsors the local Life Science Research Council, bringing companies together for monthly lunches and programs.

Purdue is at the heart of much of the growth and promise, Brooks says. Mapping of the human genome opened the door to new research and commercial opportunities, says Purdue's Charles Rutledge, interim vice provost for research and executive director of the university's Discovery Park, a $100 million research center under construction.

"What we are doing is applying instrumentation to better understand what the blueprints of the human genome are telling us," he says. "We will be spinning out more and more new technology to develop new companies. We are now in the early phases of this growth."

Among the core, well-established companies providing a solid base tot the growing new cluster is Eli Lilly and Co.'s Tippecanoe Laboratories, with 1,200 employees and four new drags coming by the end of 2004, including a combination of Zyprexa and Prozac for treating depressive mood swings, and another five in the pipeline.

Another top player is MED Institute, a Cook Group company that develops new medical-product concepts and is celebrating its 20th year in the Purdue Research Park. Also in the park is SSCI Inc., a 75-employee contract research and analytical lab which is reporting more than 700 percent growth in the last five years.

Those expanding in elude West Lafayette-based Bioanalytical Systems Inc. (BASi), which recently acquired drug discovery and development companies on both coasts and now employs 350 worldwide. About 180 are local, where the company is adding another 35,000 square feet to its labs and facilities.

Also growing: Cook Biotech Inc., another Cook Group company, which is building a $6 million, 55,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in the research park. The 75-employee company has...