The scientific talent has been in St. Louis for years. The keys to transforming that talent into viable business — money and infrastructure — have not.

So on Tuesday a handful of the region's prominent research institutions and life sciences supporters took a step toward transforming St. Louis into a biosciences powerhouse they hope will rival coastal competitors.

The effort will be led by the newly formed BioSTL, formally launched on Tuesday and financed by some of the area's premier institutions and investors: Washington University, BJC HealthCare and the St. Louis Life Sciences Project, which have committed $30 million over the next five years.

"Being on the cutting edge means being in a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem," said Donn Rubin, who will be president and chief executive of BioSTL. "That's what attracts the rock stars."

And keeps them.

In the past, St. Louis institutions — from the Missouri Botanical Garden to Monsanto to St. Louis University and many others — have lured and nurtured first-rate researchers, only to watch them leave for Boston or the Bay area. There, venture capitalists can roam world-class laboratories, looking to finance the next blockbuster innovation, Rubin said.

BioSTL aims to lure those investors here, as well as entrepreneurs who have experience shepherding early-stage life sciences developments into marketable products and thriving businesses.

BioSTL aims to expand the region's entrepreneurial life science efforts, which have been building over the past decade. In 2001, William H. Danforth, chancellor emeritus of Washington University, launched the Coalition for Plant and Life Sciences. The coalition, in turn, spearheaded local venture capital funds, created BioGenerator to develop new bioscience companies and helped establish the CORTEX and BRDG parks to provide lab space. These efforts have helped launch 26 new start-ups and have convinced several life sciences companies to move operations to St. Louis. These companies produce a wide array of products, from improved defibrillators to better "bio-based" batteries to a magnet-based technology that helps anti-stroke medicine target clots.

"Everybody's been working together, and now we have much more development," Danforth said. "All of that's been growing, and now we're ready for the next step."

BioSTL aims to unify the region's life science strategies and put a single brand on the effort. Its employees will seek to identify promising research and marry that work with funding and guidance. Its partner organizations — including BioGenerator, CORTEX and BRDG — will share BioSTL's resources, getting marketing, data-collection and training in the process.

"We need to use our resources more efficiently," Rubin said. At the outset, BioSTL will have five employees, four of whom will work out of the group's new headquarters in Clayton. More will soon land on the payroll.

One primary focus will be identifying entrepreneurs and venture capital funds that already have ties to the region, minimizing the chances that they'll leave.

"We expect some companies to leave because there's not enough critical mass here," said John McDonnell, BioSTL's founding chairman, whose family, along with Danforth's, formed the St. Louis Life Sciences Project. "But in the process we hope we build infrastructure here, so they decide to stay."

The $30 million commitment to BioSTL will go mainly to financing "pre-seed" and seed investments, which will be managed by BioGenerator. The organization will also work to attract money from the state and federal governments and from corporate, private civic entities.

"It's a start," Danforth said of the initial $30 million. But one that BioSTL hopes will leverage more investment and talent.

Danforth explained that the funds were not earmarked for any particular institution.

"To build this ecosystem, it's going to have to be open to everyone," he said, underscoring that roughly half of the start-ups developed by BioGenerator, for example, have no affiliation with an academic institution.

That spirit of openness and collaboration, in fact, could end up being the ingredient that leads to the region's success, supporters say.

Dan Broderick, the new vice president for capital formation and entrepreneurship at BioSTL, has spent his career establishing start-ups throughout the Midwest and will be using his network beyond St. Louis to attract funders. In most regions, he said, "there's a zero-sum mentality. They're polite, but there's no cooperation."

Here, there seems to be a different type of attitude.

"The level of cooperation in St. Louis is unique," Broderick said. "Everybody's pulling on the same oar here. You don't see that in too many places."