Gov. Gregoire promotes creation of Life Sciences Discovery Fund as keystone to her economic development plan

For Immediate Release: February 3, 2005

Gov. Christine Gregoire today announced the first stages of her economic development program, highlighted by a proposal to create a $1 billion Life Sciences Discovery Fund.

She said creating a fund to provide grants for promising university research, sometimes in partnership with the private sector, will put Washington at the heart of leading edge research to cure debilitating diseases and improving the quality and yield of agricultural crops.

Gregoire said the payoff would be a strengthening of the state�s reputation as a bioscience center, and the creation of as many as 20,000 new jobs in the next 10 to 15 years.

�We need to capitalize on Washington�s high-tech core to generate more family-wage jobs,� Gregoire added. �One clear way to do that is to build upon our established base of high-tech biomedical and bioscience industries and public and private research centers.�

She said Washington currently is one of the top five states in the nation in drawing grants, but with a dwindling supply of federal matching money, that could change. Washington needs to make sure the next generation of research occurs here in Washington and not somewhere else.

�The adage behind the Discovery Fund is familiar. It takes money to make money,� she said. �This is especially true in the highly competitive world of research grants. If you can scrape together matching money, you can get two, three or even ten times that amount in grants.�

But Gregoire said creating the Life Sciences Discovery Fund was only the first step in stimulating the growth of this state�s bioscience industries.

She said the state needs to target the convergence of life sciences and information technology in the form of competitive grants to build research capacity, support research with clinical and commercial promise, recruit top scientific talent, and encourage collaboration between industry and our research institutions.

Life sciences is generally defined as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, biomedical technologies, life system technologies, nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals, food processing, environmental, and biomedical devices.

SB 5581 and HB 1623, introduced this week at her request, would:

• Create a fund to make grants for promising life-sciences research in Washington;


• Beginning in 2008, provide $35 million in funding per year for 10 years from strategic tobacco settlement funds we will receive due to Washington�s unique role as leaders in the national tobacco lawsuit;


• Make this seed capital investment contingent on attracting at least $10 million in private capital by 2008, with a goal of increasing that to $100 million over time.


• Establish a board of trustees that will review applications for grants based on their potential impacts on health care, employment, and geographic diversity.

Gregoire said that over 10 years, she expects the $350 million the state contributes to be matched at least two-to-one by federal and private grants, taking the total investment to well over $1 billion.

She said Washington is fortunate to have a growing base of biotechnical and biomedical companies often spun off from public and private research institutes, but it would be a mistake not to try to expand that base in the face of aggressive attempts by other states and nations to build their own health sciences industries.

In a related area, Gregoire said she has requested that legislation be introduced this week that would facilitate the transfer of technology from research institutions to the private sector so the discoveries of tomorrow are more easily translated into commercial products that can earn royalties for our institutions and their inventors.

Gregoire also announced two other economic development proposals designed to help small businesses succeed.

The first would double the business and occupation tax credit for small businesses to help these businesses prosper when they are just getting started and may have no profits, yet still owe B&O taxes on their gross revenues. She proposed doubling the maximum credit to $70 a month to provide partial or full B&O tax relief to 25,000 small businesses.

The other proposal would double to $100 million the program cap for the Washington Link Deposit Program, which encourages banks to make loans to certified minority and women-owned businesses at below-market rates. She also is proposing eliminating the scheduled sunset of this program in 2008.

# # #