Joe Verdi gestures to a patch of trees outside his office windows in Scarborough. “This isn’t the Salk,” he says, referring to the renowned Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, “but a place like this could become the Salk.”

He means it, though as he says it, Dr. Verdi is leaning back in his chair, legs outstretched, his dark hair running over the collar of a white London United soccer shirt that, along with his green shorts and his sneakers, make him look more like a camp counselor than a nationally recognized biologist and recipient last year of an $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. He has been leading research in stem cell and regenerative medicine at the Maine Medical Center’s Research Institute for only two years, but his affable confidence – for the institute and for the future of biomedical research in Maine – make his ambitions seem simultaneously unlimited and absolutely possible.

Dr. Verdi, 42, had been director of the neural stem cell lab at the University of Western Ontario when the late MMCRI researcher Thomas Maciag, who had also won a prestigious NIH Center of Biomedical Research Excellence grant, invited him to work in Scarborough, “Yes. Sure, I’ll take it. What’s the job again?” Dr. Verdi recalls saying then. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to come to Maine?”

Recruiting, confirms MMCRI Director Kenneth Ault, isn’t a problem for the 13-year-old institute, which provides a unique academic setting for Maine Medical Center physicians to conduct research and train students. The facility is a sparkling place, with an appropriately helical staircase, bright new labs and 9,000 valuable test mice plus a few frogs downstairs. Its seminars attract world-class scientists who keep the Maine researchers at the forefront of their fields while giving the institute international visibility. It is a lure for bringing excellent doctors to MMC, a leading lab for work in cardiovascular disease and stem cells and an economic petri dish – a new career culture is growing there. To walk through its halls is to absorb the sense that something important is happening around you.

Maine hasn’t always encouraged this sort of facility. For decades until the 1990s, it napped comfortably as federal spending on research and development made science the endless frontier and placed universities at the well-funded edges of exploration. As these universities grew, new industries developed around them and those industries led to new skills and new employment.

Now there is a huge second wave of federal research spending, this time in medicine. The research budget for NIH has doubled in recent years and is likely to continue to rise. “I don’t know if people know this, but we are in the midst of an unbelievable revolution in biology,” says Dr. Ault, who came to MMC from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 1986 and helped found the institute. “It’s just moving at breakneck speed.”

The state has awakened slowly – no sense in rushing something that had worked everywhere else for a half century – and still underfunds one of its most promising means of growth, though the public’s approval of $40 million in biomedical funding over the last four year suggests it will not repeat the mistakes of the past. Anyone with doubts will be pleased to know that their investment has so far leveraged another $170 million in federal and private grants with not all the state money spent yet.

The funding has gone to five research centers: MMCRI, Jackson Laboratory, Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine and the Foundation for Blood Research. Their connections with each other and with the University of Maine form a crucial network of high-quality medical research, unparalleled opportunity for students and careers for Maine residents that allow them to remain in the state, if not in their hometowns.

“I like to say that we have two ways of addressing the brain drain,” says Dr. Ault. “Plug the hole with opportunities in education and, second, open the spigot” by bringing in researchers from around the world who attract others – as with Drs. Maciag and Verdi – and hire lab assistants and technicians in addition to the scores of people who keep an enterprise such as MMCRI going. The average pay at MMCRI, by the way, is about $57,000 a year, not just for the researchers and their staffs but the overall average.

“What’s really impressive is they’re bringing in serious grants, which means they’re recognized as a major center by NIH,” says Trish Riley, the state’s director of Health Policy and Finance, “And the fact they’re linked with the University of Maine and Jackson Lab is fabulous. It means they’re spreading out the benefits of the funding across the state.”

But this is only the beginning. MMCRI has plans to double in size, in part to protect itself from the natural fluctuations in staff and grant awards, to 20 principle investigators and $20 million a year in grants. “We know what we want to do,” says Dr. Ault, “now it’s up to the accountants.” These labs are expensive, but could Maine increase its presence in biomedicine by four or fivefold? “I think that’s not unreasonable,” he says.

Dr. Verdi is somewhat more direct. “If some people are afraid to compete with Harvard, well, get your head out of your bum and let’s do it. With some money and commitment we can compete with anyone. Anyone.”

Two questions Maine ought to ask itself about this competition: What else can it do to build the capacity and support technology transfer at these labs so that they have the best chance of winning and where else in Maine can this kind of work take place to provide the greatest public benefit? Proximity to major medical and population centers help but may not be essential. The ability to attract superb researchers absolutely is. Bringing this branch of biology to parts of Maine could literally bring them to life.

Biomedical science isn’t just another good development idea, like industrial parks or tax-free zones. It is vital work. It will increasingly affect how all of us live. In the past, Maine has supported this field mostly by offering it a beautiful coast on which to locate. But it has much more to offer. “A scientist is like an artist,” Dr. Ault observed. “First they need to do the work – paint the picture – and then go out and sell it.”

Maine has supported artists’ colonies before, and the painters at this latest one show exceptional promise. Their proud state patron can do even more to turn their initial successes into an important and enduring body of work.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.