Summers Dreams of Boston as Biotech Center

Larry Summers thinks big. Lately though he’s been thinking big about small things.

Scientists’ understanding of cells, chromosomes and genes is already catalyzing an explosion in biology, Summers says, and the president wants Harvard and Boston to capitalize mightily on the opportunity this explosion presents.

Summers imagines a Silicon Valley East—for biomedical research—rising on both sides of the Charles. Just as Stanford provided the minds, the labs and even the land to spur on the development of computer technology in Silicon Valley, Summers wants Harvard to play the central role in the coming revolution.

Summers’ dream is a wide ranging one.

It’s a vision with academic goals. Cooperation and interdisciplinary approaches will be needed to tackle the intellectual problems posed by the coming revolution, he says.

It’s a vision with physical goals. Science needs space, and even after years of building within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), it needs more. Summers is willing to pay for this future, and has some idea of where he can find the space—in Allston, Harvard’s new campus for the 21st century.

And it’s a vision that by definition goes beyond Harvard in its scope. What excites outsiders, from Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino to MIT scientists, about Summers’ vision is that it calls for the creation of a fertile climate for the growth of the biotechnology industry.

And the potential for even greater University involvement in the private sector exists as well.

What is uncertain about the vision is whether Summers can pull it off.

One problem with such a wide-ranging view is that so many aspects are likely to be met with opposition.

Summers’ predecessor Neil L. Rudenstine tried for a decade to foster greater cooperation across departments—to mixed results at best.

Summers may have in Allston the space needed for the University and biosciences’ expansion, but early talk proves that getting anyone to consider using the land is no easy task.

And while Boston seems well positioned for the anticipated explosion in biotechnology, similar booms have fizzled and it is far from clear that professors will be enthusiastic about this part of Summers’ vision.

Come Together

One of Summers’ first references to this new Silicon Valley came in front of a medical school audience at the Harvard- affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center this November.

“I am convinced that the next Silicon Valley...will happen in the biomedical area, will happen in the technology and in the products that relate to extending and improving the quality of human life,” Summers says.

Summers has primarily described his vision for Silicon Valley as an effort to strengthen Harvard’s contribution to bioscience.

The boom will happen “where the most knowledge resides and where the best systems for its application exist. I believe that can be, should be, and will be here in the Boston area,” Summers says.

Harvard, and in addition, Boston, already has a competitive advantage in attracting the most brilliant minds and producing biosciences’ most important discoveries, administrators say. The Longwood Medical Area hosts many of the nation’s premier hospital and biomedical research facilities.

But Summers and others say Harvard will need to press to stay ahead. The medical school is in the process of building an enormous new research building to be shared between basic scientists at the school itself and faculty at the affiliated hospitals.

FAS will also need to continue to expand, if its biological sciences are to remain strong.

But science at Harvard is going to need to do more than just get bigger, Summers says.

Science research is transforming “from an effort that is largely reductionist in focusing on individual reactions within individual cells, to a process that is far more systemic...from a micro process to a macro understanding,” Summers explains.

Summers says that more and more, knowledge and information does not respect disciplinary barriers.

As a result, Provost Steven E. Hyman says, Harvard needs to do more to foster collaboration between departments and between its schools.

“I don’t want to undercut the autonomy of the schools, but I don’t want there to be intellectual silos,” Hyman says. “One of the things I will be working on is initiating more ways to create collaboration in the life sciences.”

Harvard has for several years focused on fostering this type of collaboration. Hyman and other cite the recently established Bauer Center for Genomic Research and a center for neuroscience research as fledgling attempts to bring people together across disciplines.

But Hyman and Summers agree that Harvard should be going farther. The fact that there are essentially two biochemistry departments, one at FAS and another at the Medical School, is oft-cited as a sign of the need for greater coordination.

Hyman hopes to push into “unexplored synergies” between FAS, the Medical School and the School of Public Health. And the possibility of a greater role for FAS’ Division of Engineering and Applied Science in biological science programs should be investigated, he says.

The Promised Land

Summers spoke in his installation speech in October about the importance of the biological revolution.

In a separate section of the speech, he highlighted the opportunity provided by University land in Allston.

Now, five months later, the two issues have emerged as deeply interconnected.

For several years University planners have recognized that the necessary expansion of FAS science would require space, and a significant amount of it.

Land in Allston was purchased to relieve over-crowding in Cambridge.

Administrators say that now, for the first time, plans are being considered that would directly link science with Allston.

The University’s Physical Planning Committee, which is charged with investigating options for Allston, is considering among two other scenarios, a plan in which at least some of Harvard’s science departments move.

This “science scenario” has received increased attention in recent months, and University administrators say this focus has come straight from the top. Summers says he has put an emphasis on having “multiple options” on the table.

While they say it is too early to speak of specifics, Hyman and other administrators say the science option would seek to both provide the necessary space for growth and help foster collaboration.

New facilities in Allston could combine FAS scientists across departments. Other suggestions have included moving all or parts of the School of Public Health as well.

“We do need to ask whether a new shared space makes sense,” Hyman says.

Summers, Hyman and others at the schools say that some aspects of this science scenario make a lot of sense.

A competing “professional school scenario” in which the law school and Graduate School of Education—among others—move to Allston, does not necessarily solve the space woes for the sciences within FAS.

A converted Langdell library does not make a good wet lab, Hyman says.

And Cambridge residents have said they are less opposed to Harvard building new classroom space in the city thanScience Center-like monstrosities.

Short of moving parts of the medical school, few options have been taken off of the table. Summers will shortly be convening a committee of faculty from relevant departments to consider this science scenario in greater depth, Hyman says.

But Hyman says the space issues are only part of the overall focus, and that Harvard shouldn’t be waiting on Allston plans to make steps toward strengthening Harvard’s biological sciences where it can.

“I would very much like to speed and strengthen collaboration without waiting for a master plan [for Allston],” Hyman says.

The Corporate Connection

Interdisciplinary collaborations and the construction of a few University labs do not sound like the stuff of a new Silicon Valley.

But Summers is alluding to more when invoking this metaphor.

Like the Silicon Valley boom, the coming biotechnological revolution will take place in both the institutional and the private sectors, Summers says.

“Biomedical research is a crucial area scientifically, and its likely to be a crucial area economically,” Summers says. “It’s very much to Boston’s advantage if Boston can be a center, perhaps the center, for biomedical research.”

This is the point where Menino’s pulse begins to quicken, with the prospect for a new economic engine in his city.

Summers is cautious. “There are a lot of questions to be raised about the type of relationships the University forms with…the private sector,” he says.

“This isn’t the moment to discuss specific plans, but…we need to make sure we are as creative as possible not just in our science, but in our approach to institutional forms to take advantage of these opportunities,” he says.

Hyman is hesitant to allow that Harvard will take a new course of closer interaction with biotechnology in the private sector. “A big if,” Hyman calls it. “We need to explore, we need to have discussions about what that would mean,” he says.

But others suggest the opportunity is out there and Summers is sending the message that Harvard will take it more seriously.

The Kendall-MIT area of Cambridge already has the highest concentration of biotechnology firms in the Boston area.

According to Graduate School of Design Professor of Urban Design Alex B. Krieger, MIT made the decision more than a decade ago that Harvard could make today.

Cambridge then, he says, was in many ways like Allston is today—eager for investment in an under-developed area. “At the same time, MIT encouraged some of its faculty to reach out and become more entrepreneurial,” Krieger says.

Coupled with the realization of developers that if they built it, biotech would come, the area became a mecca for biotechnology.

“Harvard could be thinking, ‘Gosh MIT did this.’ They’ve outstripped us, maybe we should do more,” Krieger says.

Hyman notes that Harvard is not looking to copy any other school’s success, but says he and others will certainly be studying Stanford’s success in helping to create Silicon Valley.

The development was catalyzed when Stanford sold long term leases to 9,000 acres of university land.

Companies came to be close to the school’s high-caliber minds, and gradually a technology industry grew. After rivaling Massachusetts’ Route 128 corridor throughout the 1970s, the personal computer and internet revolutions eventually propelled Silicon Valley to the head of the pack.

But Harvard doesn’t have 9,000 acres of empty land. It has a little over 100 acres of new land in Allston—crisscrossed with railroad tracks and dotted with a television station, a Star Market and auto shops. And Harvard desperately needs the space to relieve overcrowding of academic functions.

As a result, Hyman says, any use of Harvard owned land for private sector biotechnology is unlikely.

Yet, if Harvard follows through on the science scenario and moves science to Allston, they’d likely propel themselves and Boston forward.

Krieger points out that there is room for biotech to grow up around, rather than on, Harvard land.

“There is sufficient other land, that if you take a long view, could accommodate an enormous amount of development,” Krieger says, adding that the location’s access to the Mass. Turnpike is an added plus.

A Genzyme plant already sits on Harvard’s land. Almost a decade ago, the company was attracted to the plot by the Boston Redevelopment Authority who envisioned a science park opposite the Business School’s Western Ave. frontage.

Genzyme Vice President of Engineering and Facility Development Henry J. Fitzgerald said last spring that Genzyme had built with the idea in mind that they’d soon have company. While the plant sits lonely today, Genzyme could still form the “anchor” for big biotech in Allston.

On the other edge of Harvard land, real estate developer Cabot, Cabot and Forbes is in the process of adapting a half-built building to provide biotech space.

Cabot, Cabot and Forbes President Jay Doherty says his company is very interested in Harvard’s vision for the area. If Harvard located research facilities in Allston, it would likely attract further development, Doherty says. It’s the magnet effect, he says—once a critical mass has been built up, the herd of biotech firms will descend.

But since any University moves in Allston are many years off, a build-up of biotech around Harvard’s land will take time.

“Our project is a couple of years ahead of its time—that’s its blessing, but it’s also its curse,” Doherty says.

The Valley of Doubt

So add Larry Summers, shake, stir, let sit five to ten years and voila, right? Unfortunately the chemistry is not quite so straightforward.

When Hyman describes them, new collaborations sound distinctly within reach. But past history provides a mixed record, and the current reality is not so encouraging.

Themes of interdisciplinary collaboration were a hallmark of Rudenstine’s administration. But success came only in the form of isolated programs. Summers used his institutional pulpit to argue for a change in Harvard’s sometimes balkanized culture.

It’s not clear what can be done, however. Summers may find it hard to prod on collaborations between departments, let alone schools.

“I don’t know that [collaborations] can be institutionalized,” Tarr Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Markus Meister says. “People find people, that’s how collaborations come about,” he says, adding that he sees no institutional barrier that needs to be broken.

The traditional autonomy of the schools will also make for difficulties, especially with regard to planning for Allston.

Cabot Professor of Biology Richard M. Losick writes in an e-mail that he is supportive of Summers’ goal of fostering greater collaboration “but would much prefer that [it] be done in Cambridge than in Allston.”

Losick also mentions a common objection—a move to Allston would separate undergraduates from the science Faculty.

“It would be unfortunate if our research facilities were partly centered at a location removed from where undergraduate education takes place,” Losick says.

Administrators echo the concern that undergraduates must not be left behind, but argue that regardless of whether it is FAS science departments or the Law School that relocates to Allston, the two campuses must be well connected.

At the same time, others say that a move might be acceptable, but only if all of FAS natural science moved together.

“If you’re going to move the sciences, you’re going to have to move all of it,” Meister says. “Otherwise you lose the attractiveness for Faculty members of coming to Harvard.”

And the difficulties stretch beyond Allston. According to Associate Dean at the Medical School Eric P. Buehrens, there is hardly a consensus that closer ties to industry should be explored, even at the traditionally more receptive medical school.

There are a number of worries with regard to interactions with industry. Some hesitancy stems from concern about academic freedom and intellectual property, Hyman says.

“We don’t want people to sacrifice our core values as a result of their involvement [with the private sector],” he says.

Others are more uncomfortable with the notion that Harvard can or should push for this goal of a Silicon Valley II.

“I don’t care very much for [private sector] biotech; intellectually interesting research occurs at the University,” Meister says. “I personally wouldn’t be sad if [the next boom] happened on the west coast.”

Central planning might not even be possible in these cases, Meister says.

“I don’t think that Silicon Valley was planned by anyone. There was no central planning, and even then many feel it has spun out of control,” he says.

Finally there is the problem of unpredictability. Massachusetts’ Route 128 corridor was originally seen as the place from which the information technology boom would emanate.

“As it turned out, the center occurred somewhere to the west of 128,” Hyman says.

“If there was going to be a similar boom for biological science, we would want to make sure, within the barriers of the University’s mission, that we do what we can to make sure that it happens here,” Hyman says.

—Lauren R. Dorgan contributed to the reporting of the story.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.