Contact: Will Sansom
Phone: 210-567-2579
E-mail: sansom@uthscsa.edu

The chances of a San Antonio consortium, including The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, landing the federal government’s next national research laboratory grew considerably better this week.

On July 11, consortium leaders announced that San Antonio made the cut, along with sites in Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi and North Carolina, to be finalists in the competition to attract the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility, or NBAF.

Texas Research Park site chosen
Although the winning site won’t be announced until at least mid-2008, if San Antonio is chosen, the Texas Research Park in western Bexar County will have a major new occupant and the Health Science Center’s campus in the park will have an important neighbor across the street.

Lab to protect nation from infectious agents
This facility, which will take the place of a 50-year-old animal disease center at Plum Island, N.Y., will be the site of research to enhance the nation’s agricultural and public health.

The NBAF will fill “a critical gap” in the nation’s plan to protect its people, animals and food supply from infectious agents coming from natural sources or terrorism, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Harold Timboe, M.D., associate vice president for research and a member of San Antonio’s National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility team, discusses the project with reporter Cindy Tumiel from the San Antonio Express-News.
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Health Science Center’s Dr. Harold Timboe played major role
“Making this cut of finalists really puts San Antonio on the map in the biosciences,” said Harold L. Timboe, M.D., associate vice president for research at the Health Science Center. A retired major general in the U.S. Army and former commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Brooke Army Medical Center, Dr. Timboe served as the major architect in mobilizing San Antonio’s assets to make the NBAF proposal.

“The effort was led in large part by Dr. Timboe,” said Brian Herman, Ph.D., vice president for research at the Health Science Center. “Harold was one of the visionaries about how this could benefit the San Antonio community, and was essential in bringing together the right players in the right structure to present a very successful proposal.”

NBAF consortium
The Health Science Center is a member, along with the Texas Research and Technology Foundation, Brooks-City Base, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research and The University of Texas at San Antonio, in the Texas Bio- and Agro-Consortium. The consortium proposed three sites for the NBAF ― Brooks-City Base, the Southwest Foundation and the Texas Research Park. The latter site, located directly across from the Health Science Center’s Texas Research Park Campus, was selected as a finalist.

Major economic impact
The NBAF could bring $450 million in new construction, 520,000 square feet of laboratory space and more than 300 new jobs, officials said. But that would only be the beginning of the impact.

“We’ve heard there could be up to 1,000 additional indirect jobs if we land the NBAF,” said York Duncan, president and chief operating officer of the Texas Research and Technology Foundation. “We’re anticipating, a lot like the Toyota project, to have somewhat of a supplier park for companies, research institutions, vendors and service providers. If they want to locate next to the NBAF, we will look at making land available for purchase.”

The Research Park, which has 1,236 acres, could offer 100 acres for the NBAF.

Elected officials pledge continuing support
Elected officials, including Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Gov. Rick Perry, pledged to continue working to assist the city’s bid for the NBAF.

The Texas Bio- and Agro-Consortium was formed about a year ago when San Antonio learned it was one of 14 cities under consideration for the NBAF, said the consortium’s chairman, John Kerr, interim president of the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research.

“Now that we have been selected for the short list, we will continue to work together as a consortium to promote the Texas Research Park as what we believe is clearly the ideal site for this new national research laboratory,” Kerr said.

Brian Herman, Ph.D., vice president for research, visits with Ann Stevens, president of BioMed SA, at the press conference announcing that San Antonio is a finalist.

Only city to offer three sites
Ann Stevens, president of BioMed SA, an organization promoting growth of the biosciences in San Antonio, said the city was the “only one in America to offer the government a choice of three sites for this specialized federal facility.”

San Antonio has necessary research expertise
Stevens pointed out that San Antonio also is home to the only existing privately owned maximum-containment (Bio-Safety Level 4) lab in the country. “This lab has operated for seven years with an impeccable safety record,” she said. “So, we have the expertise right here to build and operate specialized facilities of this nature.” Jean Patterson, Ph.D., directs the BSL-4 lab, which is at the Southwest Foundation.

Health Science Center benefits
Dr. Herman noted that the Health Science Center has a BSL-3 laboratory in its research complex across the street from the proposed NBAF site. He said the NBAF presence would stimulate research activity throughout the Research Park, including the Health Science Center’s facilities, which include the Institute of Biotechnology, the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, the South Texas Centers for Biology in Medicine and the AT&T Teleconference Center. Major research programs in the Health Science Center’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences are conducted at the park.

What’s next?
“Now there will be a yearlong environmental impact study of each of the sites,” Dr. Herman said. “The Department of Homeland Security site selection committee will take the output of those environmental impact studies, in addition to all the previous work that has been done, and make a recommendation as to which of the five sites should be selected.”

Mitsu Yamazaki, vice president of the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation Inc., said landing the NBAF could potentially have as large an impact in the future as the coming of Toyota did nearly four years ago. “It could be as big, in the future,” Yamazaki said.

Other national laboratories
Many of the national laboratories are household names. They include the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, to name a few.

“If we are selected, it is going to be a great thing for the Texas Research Park, for the West Side of San Antonio and for the state,” Duncan said. “It is the next great federal laboratory, and we’re very proud to be a finalist for it.”

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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the leading research institution in South Texas and one of the major health sciences universities in the world. With an operating budget of $536 million, the Health Science Center is the chief catalyst for the $14.3 billion biosciences and health care sector in San Antonio’s economy. The Health Science Center has had an estimated $35 billion impact on the region since inception and has expanded to six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. More than 22,000 graduates (physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists and allied health professionals) serve in their fields, including many in Texas. Health Science Center faculty are international leaders in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, aging, stroke prevention, kidney disease, orthopaedics, research imaging, transplant surgery, psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, pain management, genetics, nursing, allied health, dentistry and many other fields.