Harvard makes ambitious life sciences gamble

some more people who see biotech as the new economic engine...

Harvard, no less...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass (Reuters) - As Harvard University searches for a new leader, questions loom over its last president's most ambitious project: turning America's oldest university into the nation's hub for life sciences.

During his 5-year tenure as the university's president, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers worked to put Harvard at the forefront of research on how the human cell works, a question the school's founders and the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Puritan leaders would have kept in the province of religion alone.

Nearly four centuries later, Harvard's plans -- which include building a new campus of buildings -- fit well with Massachusetts' desire to rejuvenate its economy by encouraging biotechnology firms to replace the region's long-fading manufacturing base.

"For Boston to survive (it) is by being on the cutting edge of new ideas and technology," said Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser, who is also director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, a research group. "And the vision Larry Summers has for Harvard is that it would play a major role in the life sciences and not sit this one out."

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biotechnology