I’m off to a conference in Orlando today, so thought it might be interesting to follow-up on my previous post about the emerging medical device/biotechnology cluster around Austin, Texas to think about what’s happening in Central Florida.

Orlando is most well-known for Disney and theme parks, and major conferences (see my post on attending the ASH annual meeting in Orlando last year). However, the opening of a new medical school, children’s hospital and medical research institute will undoubtedly lead to biotechnology and biomedical companies considering start-ups in the surrounding area.

Florida, like Texas, offers no personal taxation and Orlando is also well connected for flight connections throughout the country.

Orlando, in my opinion, is further behind Austin, and to some degree all cities with a medical school, in it’s attempt to drive research and innovation.  Whether Central Florida can establish a critical mass of companies and sufficient industry talent is the challenge, especially as multiple regions across the United States are also competing for biotechnology $.

However, even if Orlando does not become a major biotechnology cluster, it is more likely to become a major center for clinical and biomedical research.

In April 2009, the La Jolla based Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute opened a new research facility at Lake Nona in Orlando.  It is home to 900 scientists undertaking R&D on drug discovery, stem cells, nanomedicine and translational research.

One of research areas it is focusing on is diabetes and obesity, or diabesity as it is rapidly becoming known, an area that is rapidly reaching pandemic proportions in the United States. A symposium on Frontiers in Biomedical Science: Metabolic Networks and Disease Signatures will be held on March 11.

Luke Timmerman’s post on Xconomy about the Institute and the $50M gift it received last year to change its name is well worth a read.  In another post, he also raises the question of whether biotechnology companies can make money going after diabesity, notwithstanding the market opportunity? Need and market opportunity don’t always translate into valid targets for drug development, especially when many of the issues to do with diabetes and obesity relate to lifestyle and food content.

The Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute is the cornerstone of a cluster of bio-medical research companies and healthcare institutions, including the M.D. Anderson Orlando Cancer Research Institute, the new University of Central Florida (UCF) College of Medicine that opened in 2009, and Nemours Children’s Hospital that will open in 2012.

I think it will take several years before we can see if a significant biotechnology cluster grows up around these research and medical institutions.  Whether Central Florida and Orlando can grow into a leading biotechnology region remains to be seen.

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