Topeka State legislative leaders today gave their blessing to Kansas University to continue discussions for partners in life sciences on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri line.

KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway assured the lawmakers that KU would do nothing to hurt KU Hospital or health care in Kansas.

“Nobody wants to do anything that will harm the Kansas University hospital,” Hemenway told the Legislature Budget Committee.

Committee members generally were supportive of KU in seeking medical affiliations to make the region a national life sciences center.

Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, said he hoped to see a life sciences corridor stretching from Manhattan, Kan., to Columbia, Mo., with “the KU Medical Center and hospital as two cornerstones of that corridor.”

Recent reports have indicated KU Hospital was feeling left by the KU Medical Center in talks about developing affiliations. Some lawmakers have questioned whether the discussions would benefit patients in Missouri at the expense of health care in Kansas.

Former Senate President Dave Kerr of Hutchinson, now a member of the KU Hospital board, said the best way for progress to continue was for KU Med and the hospital to develop plans jointly.

“There’s no question there has been some controversy, so I think this is a way that we can be sure that the controversy kind of dies down, and we go forward together, and everybody is going to come out a winner if we do that,” Kerr told the committee.

Sen. Dwayne Umbarger, R-Thayer, and chairman of the budget committee, said he believed that was already happening.

“I think the dialogue is already going on between the entities and that we encourage them to continue that process,” Umbarger said.

But at least one lawmaker had questions about KU’s intentions regarding the hospital.

State Sen. Jim Barone, the ranking Democrat on the budget committee, said he wanted to make sure that KU Hospital would continue to grow along with KU Medical Center.

Hemenway responded, saying, “The way we are structured, we have to grow together.”