LA JOLLA, Calif. -- It sits atop a mesa, a cluster of eight nondescript brown buildings so unimpressive that one has to be looking to notice them behind the Torrey pine trees that give the region its name.

Inside, however, scientists are busy conducting some of the most cutting-edge medical research in the world -- developing software to help create more-effective drugs, studying genetically modified fruit flies to better understand Parkinson's disease and unlocking the secrets of genes to devise new treatments for diabetes.

Welcome to the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, or "The Burnham" to those in the know.

This is a place where pictures of cancer cells hang on the walls as art and researchers in Hawaiian shirts peer into microscopes looking for ways to vanquish mankind's greatest afflictions. That mission has transformed the San Diego area into home for more than 500 biotechnology companies -- an economic engine for the 21st century worth billions of dollars.

No wonder, then, that Burnham's plan to build a satellite laboratory in Orlando is being hailed as the biggest economic-development deal for Orange County in decades.

The nonprofit institute announced Wednesday that it will bring at least 300 scientists and support staff to Central Florida during the next 10 years, a move local officials hope will be the vanguard of an industry to rival Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.

It is a new role for Burnham, long accustomed to being the smaller research institute in town, one known more for the quality of its work than the size of its research budget. Although many of its discoveries are technical and obscure, they have led to lifesaving treatments the world over, including in Florida.

For example, stents used to open the narrowed heart arteries of University of Central Florida President John Hitt have a coating pioneered by institute scientists.

"There's no doubt in my mind that Burnham is the best place to do great science," said Dr. Tomas Mustelin, who directs Burnham's research on infectious and inflammatory diseases. "Our only mission is to do great breakthrough science and advance modern medicine. We don't really do anything else."

Similarities galore

Nestled just north of downtown San Diego, La Jolla is to Southern California what officials hope Lake Nona will be to Central Florida in three decades: the nucleus of a major biotechnology cluster.

Thirty years ago though, San Diego looked a lot more like present-day Orlando.

"The big commerce here, other than the defense industry, was tourism and land development," Burnham spokeswoman Nancy Beddingfield said last week.

Today, San Diego's biotech cluster is the third-largest in the nation and also the fastest-growing. The region receives more than a billion dollars a year in research grants, employs nearly 39,000 people and has an economic impact of more than $8.5 billion a year.

"It takes a long time," said Julie Meir Wright, president and chief executive officer of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, a local business group. "Each effort undertaken in the past 30 years has been a building block to make San Diego one of the best biotech clusters in the country, if not the world."

Burnham's role in this vast critical mass can seem small at first glance -- the institute's $90 million budget is dwarfed by its neighbors'.

Across the street is the Scripps Research Institute, which receives $265 million annually for research and is also branching out to Florida after a successful pitch three years ago by state and Palm Beach County officials. Just down the hill is the University of California at San Diego's campus, which gets $728 million each year for research.

Unlike some of its bigger counterparts, Burnham has no street or auditorium in the community that bears its name.

Reputation, however, is another thing. Burnham consistently ranks among the top 20 organizations in the world for the impact of its research publications, according to the Institute for Scientific Information, an international clearinghouse for academic research.

Stem cells are focus

Burnham has established itself as a leader in the study of stem cells, those changeable cells touted for their potential to repair damage to the body and cure a range of illnesses in the process.

Dr. John Reed, the institute's president and CEO, sits on a state committee charged with overseeing Proposition 71, a measure California voters approved in 2004 that makes $3 billion in state funds available for stem-cell research.

Burnham also recently partnered with Scripps, UCSD and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies to form the San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, which seeks to build and operate a cooperative embryonic-stem-cell-research facility on the university's campus.

"You would be off track to just say that Burnham is not the biggest research institute," Wright said. "Ninety-million [dollars] a year in research is considerable, and when you look at the kinds of things they've got coming out of there -- it's pretty impressive."

Driving the operation is the institute's motto and mantra: "From Research, the Power to Cure." Burnham scientists do not seek discoveries that end in petri dishes or test tubes. Its mission is to create science that ultimately will have a positive impact on human health.

"I remind our scientists about that all the time," Reed said last week. "I basically challenge them that when you reach different junctures in your research, I always say take the path that has the more likely impact on patients."

Long hours pay off

Hours at the institute are flexible, and the dress is casual. But Burnham scientists are some of the best in the world, taking their research seriously and working long hours.

"Most of us work 24-7 -- we just do other things at the same time," said Mustelin, who keeps 19 empty champagne bottles in his office that commemorate large research grants and major publications. "It happens often that my wife will ask me why I didn't pay attention to what she said. It's because I'm thinking science."

With the beach only about two miles from the institute, some scientists like to surf before work or run during lunch. When members of Biocom, the local life-science consortium, get together for their monthly 40-mile bike rides, "the Burnham folks are always the ones there in the greatest numbers," Biocom President Joe Panetta said.

Because its not the flagship research institute, and because it's surrounded by hundreds of biotech companies, the Burnham operates quietly in La Jolla. Resources are directed to research, not public relations.

The result is that while locals know that the life-sciences industry is generally a good thing and that Burnham is a part of it, most don't know the particulars.

"From what I understand, it's a research institute for cancer," said David Miller, who has lived in the region on and off since 1995.

"I'm not even sure where it is," said Miller's wife, Lisa.

The irony is not lost on Reed.

"We're such international leaders in medical research, but even in our own community a lot of people can't tell you what Burnham is," he said.

Reed hopes that the buzz generated by Burnham's arrival in Orlando will lead to more awareness in Central Florida of, "who we are, what we do, what we're all about."

San Diego a perfect match

Burnham's founder, Dr. Bill Fishman, came to California in the 1970s just as San Diego's research cluster was starting to bud. A cancer researcher from Tufts University in Massachusetts, he was facing age-mandated retirement from his university and was looking for a place to continue his research.

San Diego, with its established university and research institutes, seemed like the perfect place.

"It would be easier to do this research here than anywhere else in the country," Beddingfield, Burnham's spokeswoman, said.

With a $200,000 grant transferred from Tufts, Fishman and his wife, Lillian, founded what they called the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation in 1976.

In 1996, the center became the Burnham Institute, to honor Roberta and Malin Burnham, a San Diego couple known for their philanthropy to area nonprofits.

While cancer remains Burnham's flagship research field, Burnham's ventures are now organized into three centers: Cancer, Neuroscience and Aging, and Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases.

The establishment of the Orlando facility will be a new chapter for Burnham.

Central Florida will likely be the site for a fourth center that will focus on diabetes. In addition to the 300 new personnel in Florida, Burnham plans to increase its La Jolla operation to 900 employees during the next 10 years.

Although Burnham doesn't intend to move scientists from California to Orlando, Reed expects that the collaboration between scientists on the two coasts, along with oversight from La Jolla, will ensure that the institute's vision stays intact.

With $300 million in public and private incentives and the ability to partner with UCF and the University of Florida, this new venture carries little risk for Burnham.

"I firmly believe we're going to be successful," Reed said. "In a couple decades, people are going to look back on this and study this as a model for a number of things -- for economic development, for building innovative clusters of activity that bring forward innovation. I'm just excited to be a part of it."