11-29-09: Higher Ed Environment: Putting money where the mouse is

Just a few months ago, Dr. Peter Erhardt was in the midst of research he hoped could someday save the lives of heart attack patients, but his funding was running out. He calculated his chances of receiving the needed grant through the usual channels at less than 1 in 1,000.

Then the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed and his lab at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute in Watertown won a grant for $1.2 million over two years.

“We started to dream,’’ said Erhardt. “It was the best time when this money came.’’

The funding was enough to save his job and that of a colleague, as well as hire a new research technician. Their work is on proteins that destroy heart tissue after a heart attack. They hope it will lead to new drugs to limit the damage.

Research institutions have won a healthy portion of the region’s federal economic stimulus funding.

Of the $232 million flowing into area communities from the $787 billion stimulus package, at least $29 million is for scientific or technological research, according to figures posted on the federal website tracking the program’s results, www.recovery.gov.

For some recipients, like Boston Biomedical Research, the grants generate just a handful of immediate jobs. But proponents say they will have a ripple effect throughout the economy and will also bolster the region’s profile as a hub of scientific innovation.

“This is the best place in the world for early-stage innovation,’’ said Bob Coughlin, president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. “This early-stage research actually creates new companies that will create jobs exponentially. We also like to . . . focus on not only how good it is for job creation and the economy, but also how good it is for the patient population globally.’’

Others question whether these are the kinds of job-generating projects that were intended when the stimulus law was passed.

“A lot of them are worthy and laudable projects, but that wasn’t what the bill was sold to people as,’’ said Republican state Senator Richard Tisei, the chamber’s minority leader. “The stimulus was supposed to put people back to work immediately. I think the stimulus is turning out to be one of the biggest boondoggles we’ve ever seen.’’

Across the region, stimulus money is flowing to nonprofit groups, municipalities, and private companies. Millions of dollars are going to road improvement projects, local police departments, housing programs, and energy-efficiency initiatives. The biggest winner in the region was Reveal Imaging Technologies Inc., a Bedford-based company that received two contracts totaling more than $77 million for explosives-detection systems and other security technology for the country’s airports.

But it will be the research jobs that provide the biggest lift to the economy over the long run, said Ted Welte, president and chief executive officer of the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce.

“What we’ve seen so far are the road projects and things like that, which are ramping up employment while the project is underway, but then those jobs go away,’’ he said.

The research jobs “have a much stronger long-term impact on the economy,’’ said Welte. “The results of the research may actually go beyond the idea of this temporary stimulus, to get the economy going again, by creating a real multiplier by bringing new avenues of employment into the mix from the new research results that come from these initial jobs.’’

Brandeis University won stimulus money for 35 projects totaling approximately $7.5 million. About $900,000 will be used for a project that involves hiring a tenure-track biologist and purchasing high-powered microscopes that allow researchers to study neural circuitry in the visual cortex.

The project serves two purposes, according to Eve Marder, a biology professor at the Waltham school. It allows for an important hire, she said, but it also boosts the small businesses that manufacture the specialized equipment needed in such research.

“When the economy crashed, almost every institution around the country had a freeze on faculty hiring,’’ said Marder. “There was a risk of losing a whole generation of exceptionally well trained and talented people.’’

But she said the one direct hire, while important, doesn’t begin to tell the whole story of how the stimulus money will circulate through the economy.

“Yes, you make some jobs directly but you also end up saving jobs in the companies that sell the chemicals and the supplies and the equipment that’s needed to do the science itself,’’ said Marder. “There’s really a whole domino effect.’’

Then there’s the research itself, and how that might contribute. In this case, the biologist Brandeis hires will do work on how large groups of neurons work together to process information in a healthy brain, in order to better understand what happens when the brain faces disease.

Ole Isacson, a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, is leading a project that won $3.7 million in stimulus funding over two years, to be shared among seven institutions including his lab at McLean Hospital in Belmont.

The research involves developing stem cells from the skin cells of patients with Parkinson’s disease, and then converting the stem cells into brain cells that carry each patient’s unique makeup. The procedure gives researchers a new window into how brain cells in Parkinson’s patients function, Isacson said; they otherwise can’t be studied directly until after a patient’s death.

The hope, he said, is that the research will lead to new drugs to fight Parkinson’s disease, which is a degenerative disorder of the nervous system.

“In some larger perspective, this is the beginning of personalized medicine,’’ said Isacson.

It’s also work that might not have a home without the stimulus funding.

“This is very novel and innovative work, which doesn’t have much funding at present,’’ he said. “The funding allows this to survive in a very difficult funding environment.’’

He said he doesn’t know for certain how many jobs will come from the funding but estimates perhaps two will be created at McLean.

His answer highlights one of the frustrations of the Stimulus Act. It’s extremely difficult to pin down the exact funding or number of jobs created for any of these projects by looking at www.recovery.gov.

For example, Isacson’s project is listed at $1.9 million and zero jobs created, according to the federal website.

That’s because the hospital is required to file quarterly reports, and the lower figure appears to represent only the first year’s funding, even though it’s a two-year award, according to Laura Neves, a McLean Hospital spokeswoman. And since the anticipated jobs have not started yet, they will be reported in a future quarter, she explained.

The Boston Biomedical Research Institute project listed at www.recovery.gov shows the correct number of jobs (three) but a lower total funding amount. Officials at Boston Biomedical reviewed the numbers and concluded that the federal government is only showing first-year funding.

The same issues show up for the Brandeis project on neural brain circuitry listed with the federal government, which shows no jobs being created, rather than the tenure-track position that will be hired, and a lower funding amount, $555,088, when the total is actually $900,000, according to the university.

Laura Gardner, the director of research communications at Brandeis, said the discrepancies are based on the reporting system.

Complicating the tracking process further, some stimulus money looks an awful lot like other funding. When first contacted by the Globe, a Boston College spokesman said the school had received no stimulus funding. But the federal government has Boston College down for 12 projects totaling nearly $4 million.

It turns out the funding, including some for the Newton college’s Weston Observatory, which does work on earthquakes, is part of annual federal earmarks, according to BC spokesman Jack Dunn. That is, the school didn’t apply for stimulus finding, it simply received the grants it gets annually for ongoing programs, he said, but the money has been wrapped under the stimulus heading.

But researchers say they don’t want any confusion over the figures to somehow dilute the importance of their work.

Charles Emerson is director and senior scientist at Boston Biomedical, an independent, nonprofit organization founded 40 years ago.

He said his institute probably would have had to let Erhardt and his critical research go if the stimulus funding had not come through. Like other scientists interviewed, he said new jobs will be created as the research progresses. Emerson said Erhardt’s lab would likely partner with a local biotech company to further drug development if the research is fruitful, and that could mean, later, drug manufacturing jobs.

“It would amplify up like that,’’ Emerson said. “It really does save jobs.’’

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2009/11/29/local_research_institutions_cite_gains_from_federal_stimulus_funding/