Overland Park ? The chairman of the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute on Friday unveiled plans to create a “life sciences corridor” between Columbia, Mo., and Manhattan, Kan.

Anchored by research efforts in the Kansas City metropolitan area, the corridor will include Lawrence and Kansas University.

Institute chairman Irv Hockaday said that by year’s end, he would present Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and her Missouri counterpart, Gov. Matt Blunt, a plan for developing the corridor.

Blunt and Sebelius welcomed Hockaday’s initiative.

“We have tremendous opportunities for growth,” Sebelius said.

Sebelius and Blunt were featured guests at a summit on regional growth hosted by Sprint Nextel and the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

The summit culminated with Blunt and Sebelius signing a pledge to collaborate on issues – education, research, marketing, venture capital, transportation – that fuel the region’s economic development efforts.

Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce chairman Tom Bowser and Sprint Nextel chief executive officer Gary Forsee also signed the pledge.

Though the summit’s speakers praised the area’s research capabilities, Hockaday said they remain “largely under recognized” and “insufficiently coordinated.”

Afterward, Hockaday called attention to KU’s efforts to become a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center by 2010.

“To do that will require a major clinical base,” he said.

“There is some clinical base in Kansas, but there is a larger clinical base in Missouri.”

It would make sense, Hockaday said, for the two camps – Kansas and Missouri – to build on each other’s resources rather than develop them separately.

“We need to organize all the life-science activity that’s going on in the two states,” he said, “determine which should receive a priority designation based on thoughtful criteria – like how many jobs, what kind of jobs and how quickly those jobs would be created – and then allocate our resources against an agreed-upon set of priorities.”

Also, Hockaday noted that federal Homeland Security officials are soliciting site proposals for a 500,000-square-foot facility for research aimed at protecting the nation’s food supply.

“This is an enormous opportunity for us to work together,” he said.

• Grant to boost job training (02-02-06)
• Chat with state Rep. Tom Sloan about legislative issues (01-19-06)
• Lawmakers weigh session priorities (01-07-06)
• Kansas Bioscience Authority exploring investment options (01-06-06)

Joerg Ohle, president of Bayer Corp.’s Animal Health Division for North America, used the summit to announce plans to boost private and public investment in the area’s animal health and nutrition markets.

The region, Ohle said, already accounts for 40 percent of the industry’s sales. It could reach 60 percent, he said.

About 200 people – a mix of corporate executives, elected officials and university presidents – attended the three-hour summit.

Dick Brown, co-chairman of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, warned legislators in the audience that bills aimed at limiting stem cell research would harm the region’s efforts to attract top-flight scientists.

Brown said he hoped the Kansas Board of Education’s recent endorsement of intelligent design “would be thoughtfully addressed by the voters of Kansas.”