Rx for economic growth: The Central Indiana Life Sciences Initiative.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Focus - Brief Article

Everyone wants economic health for their community. In central Indiana, civic, educational and business leaders have decided that the prescription for health is the health business itself. That's the thinking behind the Central Indiana Life Sciences Initiative, a major push launched in February aimed at developing the region as a recognized center for the life-sciences industry.

Central Indiana already has a lot of what it will take to be a world-class leader in life sciences, according to a new study by the Battelle Memorial Institute. Already, life sciences is the state's biggest private industry, employing more than 82,000. Leading central Indiana firms include Eli Lilly & Co., Guidant, Roche Diagnostics, Cook Group, Dow AgroSciences, Clarian Health Partners, Covance and Hill-Rom, not to mention the orthopedics giants based in Warsaw, including Zimmer, DePuy and Biomet.

The mid-section of the state has a "life-sciences corridor" stretching from Bloomington to West Lafayette, including industry and top-notch university-based research facilities linked to IU and Purdue. New additions include the Indiana Genomics Initiative at IU, Purdue's Discovery Park and the Indiana Proteomics Consortium, a partnership of IU, Purdue and Lilly aimed at boosting the study of proteins.

"We've never in any way tried to think about how to glue these things together," says David Goodrich, who heads the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, which is coordinating the initiative. "We think there are great synergies." The life-science initiative aims to take the region's strengths, coordinate them better, foster new collaborations, stir in major new investment capital, attract more life-sciences workers and researchers, and market the region as a health hub.

One of the visions is the creation of a life-sciences campus, likely to be spread across what is now a mostly industrial area just adjacent to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the IU Medical Center. Already...