What are the benefits of the ISM?
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As proposed, the ISM will:
- Grow the Economy –
Provide 234 high wage jobs by 2011 with an average wage of
$71,818
- Support Education -
Give preference to local graduates
- Create the highest
concentration of biomedical research in the Spokane region
- Initiate programs
in Genomics, Epigenomics and Systems, Chromosomal and
Computational Biology
- Construct research
cores in DNA Sequencing, Expression Profiling, Cytogenetics,
Bioinformatics, and Molecular Diagnostics
- Leverage, at a
steady state (year seven) 2.5:1 funds that are provided by state
and local sources
- Commit to forming
five companies during its first seven years
- Fill ten of the
twenty planned faculty positions through joint appointments with
the founding partners
- Disease focus will
include: cardiovascular, cancer, neurodegenerative and metabolic
diseases
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art of the mission of the ISM is to play an important role in the creation
of a local knowledge-based economy by stimulating biomedical discovery and
commercialization in cooperation with its partners. This mission is not
unique to the ISM when compared to other similar institutions; rather the
ISMs organizational model is a proven catalyst for economic growth through
biomedical research. In 2002, the city of Phoenix made a significant
commitment to the development of the Translational Genomics Research
Institute (TGen) which has leapfrogged the community to the forefront of
biomedical research and innovation. The communitys financial investment in
TGen, a nonprofit biomedical research institute focused on bringing better
diagnostics and targeted therapeutics to cancer patients, has been extremely
successful in serving as a research anchor that has spurred significant
biomedical activity in a previously barren environment for this industry. A
recent economic impact study revealed that TGen garnered a substantial
return on investment for the state of Arizona in its first four years of
operation, creating a current four-to-one return with an expected $202.4
million annual return in 2025 with over 3,000 jobs created and $16.6 million
in total tax revenue.

The thriving economic activity generated by these institutes, in regions
such as in Arizona or San Diego, has motivated state and local governments
around the country to make significant infrastructure investments in order
to support these entities as part of the development of their biosciences
sector. One example is the $510M state and local incentive package to
attract Scripps Florida, a unit of the San Diego-based Scripps Institute, to
Palm Beach County. To date, the institute has hired 160 scientific staff;
and the Governor has proposed a $250 million Innovation Incentive Program to
pursue similar ventures in the future.
The bioscience industrys impact on local economies is best demonstrated by
multiplicative statistics which illustrate the magnitude that employment,
wages, and output within the industry ripple throughout economic sectors
within the region. For example, there are approximately 1.2 million
bioscience jobs in the U.S., and while still a small portion of all U.S.
employment, it is estimated that these have generated an additional 5.8
million jobs in the economy, resulting in a total employment impact of 7.0
million jobs. In addition to creating new jobs, the economic ripple effect
of bioscience is activated by increased wages. For example, the average wage
of a bioscience worker in 2004 was $54,775, $26,000 greater than the average
private sector wage. BIO additionally reports that real increases in
bioscience wages have grown over 4 times more quickly since 2001 than the
average private sector work in the U.S. Furthermore, throughout the country
bioscience has also become a significant catalyst for entrepreneurial
activity as innovative technologies are commercialized.
In recent years, the Inland Northwest, particularly Spokane, has made
significant strides towards establishing the infrastructure that would
support a reinvention of the regional economy. Spokane's unique and
collaborative assets, including research universities and health care
providers, provide a necessary platform to build a bio-cluster. The
challenge for Spokane, specifically, and Eastern Washington as a whole, is
to actively continue to invest strategically in knowledge and deeply rooted,
immobile assets in order to gain the critical mass necessary for robust
economic revitalization. Spokane is well-positioned to garner an influential
stake in the emerging bioscience economy, but we must continue to invest in
the key infrastructural elements; building our research and development
capacity is a necessary component in that process.