Twenty-four professionals from the life sciences industry convened for what proved to be a very progressive assembly .
Children's Mercy CEO Rand O'Donnell, the chair of the proceedings, saw the luncheon as a "window of opportunity" not only to review the challenges ahead but also to recollect how the life sciences "initiative" came to be. "What is it?" O'Donnell asked. "Why us? What can it become? Where are we? What do we need to do?" By the time the session ended two hours later, those gathered had created something more than a road map of the challenges ahead. They created an oral history of the road already traveled.
ORIGINS
The question was raised, whence the phrase "life sciences?" If the participants tend to take it for granted, the public does not. From a marketing perspective, the phrase has a fresh, progressive ring to it.
UMKC Chancellor, Martha Gilliland believes its origins lay in the academy in the integration of basic biology and health research. It had to have been the inspiration, she joked, of "some very insightful chancellor somewhere." This person, she asserted, must have grown weary of all the academic migrations and subdivisions and decided to coalesce them into a comprehensive block.
David Morrison of St. Luke's sees technology as the driving force behind the unification of life sciences as a discipline. "Now it is clear," said Morrison, "that the fundamental biology that goes into all these areas is pretty much the same."
Don Hagen of KU Med attributed the origin of the phrase "life sciences," at least in its local use, to research consultants who had been hired for that purpose. Whatever its source, all agreed, the concept seems to have found a home in the public consciousness.
As to why the Kansas City business community chose to embrace this concept, there was no dispute. In a word, "Stowers." Peter Higuchi of Cydex stated emphatically that it was Jim and Virginia Stowers who "got this whole initiative off the ground" when they announced their plans for the Stowers Institute.
KU's Hagen noted that when the Stowers vision became public, it served as "an absolutely marvelous vehicle for cooperation." Added Hagen, "We all said 'wow'." The Stowers project, as Hagen sees it, inspired the local life science community to establish formal partnerships and collaborative rela tionships between and among area universities even before the Stowers Institute opened.
On the business side, recalled Jim Spigarelli of MRI, the Civic Council and the KCADC staged a retreat "to see which area would be fruitful for investment to build a more technically-oriented economy." By this time it seemed obvious that "the catalyzing event" for rethinking Kansas City's economic future was Stowers. Out of this meeting would come the Life Sciences Initiative and, in time, the Life Sciences Institute. Although the Civic Council and the KCADC were the driving forces behind the initiative, it needed "buy-in" from area CEOs, university chancellors and presidents. And this it got.
Life sciences has "enthused the business community," added Karen Pletz. As a testament to this enthusiasm, she cited the Chamber's funding of KC Catalyst, an entity created to help commercialize high tech R&D efforts, life sciences among them.
The state of Missouri has gotten involved as well, identifying what John Houghton described as "three lead industries" to promote and support. More than coincidentally, life sciences is among them. Indeed, one gets the impression from Houghton that life sciences is first among equals. As he declared with some passion, "Kansas City has a tremendous opportunity."
Peter Higuchi of Cydex, Inc. believes that Jim and Virginia Stowers "got the whole initiative off the ground" when they announced their plans for the Stowers Institute. Dr. John Hunkeler of the Hunkeler Eye Centers is shown to the right.
