Regional Science Policy and the Growth of Knowledge Megacentres in
Bioscience Clusters
Abstract
Changes in epistemology in biosciences are generating important spatial effects. The
most notable of these is the emergence of a few ‘Bioscience Megacentres’ of basic
and applied bioscience (molecular, post-genomic, proteomics, etc.) medical and
clinical research, biotechnology research, training in these and related fields,
academic entrepreneurship and commercial exploitation by clusters of ‘drug
discovery’ start-up and spin-off companies, along with specialist venture capital and
other innovation system support services. Large pharmaceutical firms that used to
lead such knowledge generation and exploitation processes are becoming increasingly
dependent upon innovative drug solutions produced in such clusters, and Megacentres
are now the predominant source of such commercial knowledge. ‘Big pharma’ is
seldom at the heart of Megacentres such as those the paper will argue are found in
about four locations each in the USA and Europe, but remains important for some risk
capital (‘milestone payments’), marketing and distribution of drugs discovered. The
reasons for this shift (which is also spatial to some extent) are as follows: first,
bioscientific research requires the formation of ‘collaboratory’ relationships among
hitherto cognitively dissonant disciplines - molecular biology, combinatorial
chemistry, high throughput screening, genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics to
name a few. Second, the canonical ‘chance discovery’ model of bioscientific research
is being replaced by ‘rational drug design’ based on those technologies because of the
need massively to reduce search costs and delivery timeframes. Third, the US and to
some extent European ‘Crusade against Cancer’ and other pathologies has seen major
increases in basic research budgets (e.g. to $27.3 billion in 2003 for the US National
Institutes of Health) and foundation expenditure (e.g. $1billion in 2003 by the UK’s
Wellcome Trust; $1 billion approximately by the top ten US medical foundations, and
a comparable sum from corporate foundations). Each of these tendencies weakens the
knowledge generation role of ‘big pharma’and strengthens that of Megacentres. But
the process also creates major, new regional disparities, which some regional
governances have recognised, causing them to develop responsibilities for regional
science policy and funding to offset spatial biases intrinsic in traditional national (and
in the EU, supranational) research funding regimes. Responses follow a variety of
models ranging from market following to both regionalised (decentralising by the
centre) and ‘regionalist’ (ground-up), but in each case the role of Megacentres is
justified in health terms. But their role in assisting fulfilment of regional economic
growth visions is also clearly perceived and pronounced in policy terms.