Biotech industry, university leaders to form collaborative

With a new governor set to take office in January and the world's largest biotechnology convention headed to Boston next spring, leaders of universities and local biotech businesses are meeting this morning to try to launch a lobbying group and think tank that would unite life-science companies, academic laboratories, and hospitals.

Led by Harvard University provost Steven Hyman, today's breakfast meeting at the Boston Athenaeum includes leaders of the University of Massachusetts and Boston University, as well as biotech executives and economic development groups.

Although the group doesn't yet have a firm agenda, it has a name -- the Massachusetts Life Science Collaborative -- and a budget of more than $600,000 in donated funds. Its goal is to plug a hole that has frustrated leaders for years: Although biomedical science in Massachusetts represents tens of thousands of jobs and attracts more than a billion dollars of federal research money annually, it is not represented by a central group that coordinates industry, universities, and government.

"We're not known for this sort of cooperation, frankly," said Boston Foundation president Paul Grogan, who is backing the consortium with $130,000 and will be at the meeting.

Grogan and Hyman will be joined by Thomas Finneran, head of the state biotechnology lobby; UMass president Jack Wilson; BU president emeritus Aram Chobanian; Massachusetts General Hospital president Peter Slavin; and representatives from drug companies Genzyme Corp. and Merck & Co.

Greater Boston has what may be the world's densest cluster of top life-science companies and academic labs, but leaders often point to competition from California, North Carolina, Singapore, and other regions that boast well-organized efforts to recruit biotech research and business.

"There are other countries and states nipping at our heels, and the life sciences are arguably the heart-lung machine of the economy of this state," said Mitchell Adams of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a quasipublic office providing staff and most of the initial money for the project.

The idea of a regional consortium has been advanced before, but fizzled. Three years ago at a Harvard Business School summit, the presidents of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exhorted 100 local biomedical leaders to work together on the housing, transportation, and development hurdles that make it hard to build new labs and keep qualified employees.

This time, the collaborative will try to be up and running by May, when the trade organization BIO lands at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center for its international convention. About 1,700 companies are expected to be represented at the event.

Stephen Heuser can be reached at sheuser@globe.com.

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in yesterday's Business section about a meeting of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Collaborative misidentified Aram Chobanian as the president of Boston University. Chobanian is president emeritus.)