applied in specalist medical research institutes at universities, like the Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute at Harvard, or the New England Enzyme Centre at Tufts University,
Boston. Research in other key fields noted earlier (cancer, cardiovascular, AIDS,
diabetes, and respiratory diseases) will be conducted in other independent research
institutes and university research centres like Harvard Medical School’s pre-clinical
research in Biochemical & Molecular Pharmacology, Cell Biology, Genetics,
Microbial & Molecular Genetics, and Neurobiology, or affiliates like the Joslin
Diabetes Centre. Second, such research institutes and centres both attract and train
Life Sciences talent, giving critical mass to interactive research activity. This, in turn,
strongly influences growth in funding through competitive bidding to National
Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation programmes. Third, such
‘megacentres’ interact with the large hospitals, in which clinical research as well as
patient treatment occurs along with training of physicians. Massachusetts General
Hospital and the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston are thus important large-
scale patient-bases for clinical trialling. There is, accordingly a suitable milieu also for
academic entrepreneurship, which, combined with Boston’s status as a top-three
location for venture capital and ‘knowledgeable attorneys’ (Suchman, 2000), makes it
a highly nurturing ‘economic business environment’ for exploitation as well as
exploration knowledge management in the form of leading biotechnology firms like
Immunex (recently acquired by Amgen), Biogen, Genzyme, Millennium,
TransKaryotic Therapies, and others, recently also joined through new openings or
acquisitions by the likes of Abbott Laboratories, AstraZeneca, Aventis, Pfizer and
Wyeth (recently merged with American Home Products).
Thus, while scale of expenditure in general health systems clearly matters as an entry
ticket to the megacentre ‘tournament’, it is by no means a sufficient condition. There
has also to be world-class science and world-class commercialisation capability.
There has to be localised ‘social capital’ among the actors present, which can link
appropriate partners across epistemic community boundaries. Firms help themselves
when they speak with a single voice on matters of common concern, something
portrayed in the Boston cluster by the activities of the 280-member Massachusetts
Biotechnology Council. Much of this system is portrayed in Fig. 1 below.
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