Direct flight to D.C. is boon for biotech companies

It would be tempting to nickname the new nonstop flight between Madison and Washington, D.C., the "Federal Express." Lobbyists and bureaucrats bound for Capitol Hill will undoubtedly fill their fair share of seats when Northwest Airlines begins service to Reagan National Airport in June.

However, the real value of nonstop service from Dane County Regional Airport to our nation's capital has less to do with ties to government than with business � specifically, technology-based business.

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For all its wealth of federal offices and national treasures inside the Beltway, the Washington metro area has become one of the nation's leading clusters of technology research, development and company creation; having direct air connections to the region will benefit the Madison area's high-tech economy.

More than 460 biotech companies call the Washington metro area home. The bulk of them are developing medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for human health care, which complement the strengths of the 80-plus biotech companies in Dane County.

In Virginia, which lies just across the Potomac River from Washington, a new $500 million Howard Hughes Medical Institute research campus in Loudoun County is creating a bioscience hub.

In Maryland, which is home to the third-largest concentration of life-science companies in the United States, Johns Hopkins University is developing a 2 million-square-foot biotechnology park. Johns Hopkins is the No. 1 public research university in terms of dollars spent each year; UW-Madison is third.

Even in the down year of 2002, investors poured an estimated $123 million into D.C.-area bioscience companies. That figure comes from the Biotechnology Industrial Organization, or BIO, which held its international convention in Washington in 2003. About 18,000 people attended, including 75 or so from Wisconsin.

The Washington area leads the nation in the number of researchers working on life-science projects. About 6,600 scientists are clustered in institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and George Washington universities, as well as the University of Maryland and George Mason University.

The National Institutes of Health are located on a sprawling campus in Bethesda, Md., about a 35-minute underground ride from Reagan National Airport. The NIH, a $27 billion arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, funds scientific studies at universities and research institutions across the nation.

In fiscal 2002, there were 936 NIH awards in Wisconsin totaling $372.4 million, of which 628 ($217.2 million) were for projects at UW-Madison.

The Washington metro area is also home to investors who understand how to help tech firms get up and running. The Mid-Atlantic Venture Association, which draws its members from the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland, claims 375 venture-capital professionals from 135 firms with $10 billion in assets under management.

Wisconsin, by way of comparison, has four venture-capital firms.

Since its inception, the Wisconsin Technology Council has stressed that better flight connections for the state would lead to more economic activity. Council members have worked with leaders such as Dane County Regional Airport Director Brad Livingston to help accomplish that goal. The debut of Northwest's "Federal Express" strengthens our links to one of the nation's most vibrant technology centers.