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JUPITER - Gov. Jeb Bush, educators and other politicians have broken ground on a temporary laboratory to launch the Scripps Research Institute in South Florida.
Bush has said he hopes the research center will spark biomedical development in Palm Beach County.
Taxpayers are pitching in $510-million to create an East Coast branch of the California center. State and county money runs out in seven years.
A $12-million, 40,000-square-foot lab will be built on Florida Atlantic University's Jupiter campus.
The building will be used once it opens at the end of the year until the permanent home is available in 2006 on 1,900 acres west of Palm Beach Gardens.
The institute has hired Charles Weissmann, an internationally known Swiss scientist and mad cow disease expert, to lead its Florida biotechnology center.
The first research teams are expected to arrive this summer for temporary work at Florida Atlantic's Boca Raton campus.