Editorial: The state's biotech future

March 20, 2006
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin flexed its biotech muscles once again last week, this time in an area of medicine that is at the top of everybody's to-do list: researching the viruses that cause influenza.

The establishment of a $9 million research institute on the far west side of Madison will make the city the center in the United States for genetic research, not just on influenza viruses but, more important, on the deadly strain of bird flu that many scientists fear could spark a global epidemic.

The H5N1 strain that causes avian flu already has infected a large number of domestic birds in Asia - and a smaller number in Europe and Africa - and about 180 people, 98 of whom have died over the past three years.

The announcement by Gov. Jim Doyle that Wisconsin would be the home of the 20,000-square-foot Institute for Influenza Viral Research, scheduled to open in 2007, is a coup for the state because Doyle's office had worked hard to keep the lead scientist in the project, world-renowned flu researcher
Yoshihiro Kawaoka, and his team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Kawaoka was among the first scientists to study the avian strain that infected humans during an influenza outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997. Even more significant, Kawaoka was among a group of international researchers who last fall reported that the H5N1 strain in a Vietnamese girl had shown itself to be resistant to Tamiflu, the anti-viral drug now being stockpiled globally to combat a possible flu epidemic.

And that point nicely segues into the second part of the Doyle announcement: The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene has been selected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become the first state laboratory to test whether flu strains will respond to commonly used anti-viral drugs.

So while other states talk about becoming biotech leaders, Wisconsin is already there. This latest bit of news puts Wisconsin squarely on the front line in the global war against an ever-more menacing foe.