Harvard makes ambitious life sciences gamble

CAMBRIDGE, Mass, June 4 (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 US 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.'' Some observers question whether the project, closely linked to the expansion of Harvard's Cambridge campus into Boston's Allston district across the Charles River, may lose steam after the energetic and blunt-spoken economist leaves the president's job in June. He has been invited to stay at Harvard as a professor.

No one involved expects the multi-billion dollar project to stall, according to interviews with Harvard faculty, staff, donors and independent researchers.

''It would be very easy to come to the conclusion that Harvard is going to take a time-out on some of these more difficult strategic decisions,'' said Philip Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs partner who graduated from Harvard College.

''But Harvard is bigger than one person, even than its president,'' Murphy, a friend and supporter of Summers said.

SHAPING DEBATE When word spread this year that Summers' term marked by controversy over remarks he made that riled affirmative action advocates and feminists might soon end, the university moved quickly to demonstrate how serious it is about shaping public debate and policy on life sciences.

At a hastily arranged news conference on February 17, five days before Summers resigned, Harvard announced plans to break ground next year on a 500,000-square-foot science complex that will house its Stem Cell Institute.

There, scientists will try to create cloned embryonic stem cells -- master cells that can grow into almost any tissue in the body. Some scientists say stem cell research may one day yield a cure for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.

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