nature@BIO 2007

This is making headlines across the country this morning. Many are comparing Massachusetts’s proposed $1 billion life sciences initiative to California's $3 billion for stem cell research, although the Massachusetts plan (announced yesterday at BIO by Governor Deval Patrick) is a lot more than just a stem cell plan. Here's how the Boston Globe describes it today:

Over 10 years, the state would issue $500 million in bonds to pay for capital investments at public institutions and other facilities. It would also spend $25 million a year on direct research grants and offer $25 million annually in tax credits to biotech companies that promise to create jobs in Massachusetts.

The administration, however, has not determined how much money would be dedicated to different areas of research or how much would be available to the private sector.

So it's not clear yet how much of that money would be for stem cell research. But overall, it's meant to make up for the shortfall in NIH funding and spur more commercialization of research.

In addition to the $1 billion in state funding, the plan calls for $250 million in matching funds from the private sector.

Part of the proposal includes the establishment of the Massachusetts Stem Cell Bank, estimated to cost $66 million. The Globe said eight MA hospitals and universities, including Harvard, have already pledged to deposit their stem cell lines. The goal is to make this stem cell bank the biggest in the world. UMass Worcester would receive $38 million for a new RNA interference research center, headed up by Nobel Laureate Craig Mello. (For more details, see here.)

Posted by Corie Lok on May 09, 2007
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From The Scientist’s web editor, Simon Frantz:

There’s a rumor going round that Bono made an unannounced visit to the exhibition hall yesterday morning. The Scientist’s director of business development, Jeremy Abbate, told me that Bono was walking around the hall and even visited our exhibition stand. As the full story involves some shameless plugging for a new biotech magazine that we have just launched, I’ll resist from telling it here, and if you want to read more click here). But I’m wondering if the rock star really was at BIO. He didn’t give a speech as far as I can tell, and I remember one BIO in San Francisco where there was a whole host of celebrity lookalikes roaming round the hall. So, can anyone confirm or refute the sighting?

Posted by Michael Francisco on May 08, 2007
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From The Scientist's web editor, Simon Frantz:

One of the good things about going to BIO is that you get a very quick handle on what the community is thinking and anticipating the most. For me the most talked about subjects so far have been alternative funding methods and the large presence of Malaysia at the conference. Do you agree, or have you spotted other themes emerging at the conference?

Posted by Michael Francisco on May 08, 2007
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The crowd for the luncheon speaker today proved too big for the Convention Center -- I was in line for the overflow room to hear Michael J. Fox speak and was just three people away from being let in when security stopped us, saying the overflow room was full, too. I limped away, hungry, but Ed Silverman at pharmalot covers the speech on his blog: Fox said, in part, that companies are "more interested in repackaging old ideas for profit" than chasing innovative, riskier drugs, and he added that "Levodopa is the gold-standard treatment for Parkinson's...But it's a little frustrating that the best drug we've got is one that's been around for 40 years. 40 years!"

There's more BIO coverage on pharmalot.com. The blog also is linked to our site along the left-hand side under recommended links.

Posted by Brady Huggett on May 07, 2007
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I was due to fly from San Francisco to Boston on U.S. Airways with a late Sunday arrival. Yesterday I got to SFO to find out I'd somehow booked myself into a flight route that doesn't actually exist (U.S. Airways blamed Orbitz), followed up by my rebooked flight being pushed back twice due to mechanical issues and then finally cancelled. I had to take an overnight flight with a layover in Phoenix, putting me into Logan this morning at around 6 am. Bleary-eyed and exhausted, I felt more like I'd flown to Europe than Boston.

But as I waited in line to rebook in SFO, complaining passengers grousing all around me, I started thinking about what a troubled sector the airline industry is. Consider this: Fuel costs are rising, small "specialty" airlines are undercutting the biggest flyers, the internet has made it easy for anyone to compare flight costs, and weather wreaks havoc on scheduling. And anytime a flight is grounded, 200 passengers want to point fingers and shout.

So I did some looking. This editorial in the Washington Post points out that in the fall of 2005, nearly half of travelers in the air were on planes owned by airlines operating under Chapter 11. And this PDF from the Department of Transportation shows, among other things, the percent of time certain airlines arrive on schedule. U.S. Airways hits its mark a lowly 55 percent of the time into 81 reportable airports. That's last on the list (Hawaiian Airlines was first, at about 94 percent into 14 airports).

Not good. But stack that up against biotechnology: The Tufts Center pegs the cost of developing a drug to be more than $800M, (noted here in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery) and at least 10 years of work. That figure comes from dated research, though, and most put the cost today at around $1B. Burrill and Co. reports that the chance of a drug moving from preclinical work to NDA approval is less than 1 percent. The FDA is taking fire from the public and undergoing change. And the public markets are providing valuations that most biotechs find unappealing.

Looking at that, as troubled as airlines might be, it beats working in drug discovery.

Posted by Brady Huggett on May 07, 2007
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From The Scientist's web editor, Simon Frantz:

Reporters entering the press room today were greeted with a sign stating that the media will not be able to attend Queen Noor of Jordan’s keynote presentation on Tuesday. BIO officials say this is at the request of Queen Noor of Jordan’s people, who are concerned about the safety of her new family, as well as guarding against being misconstrued by the press. This is not only a sad indictment of our times, it also highlights a growing trend for companies or institutions that court publicity but are unwilling to provide full access (see a recent editorial we ran in The Scientist. As regular BIO attendees will know, Bill Clinton’s keynote speech last year was closed to the media, although Clinton’s group later agreed to let trade press attend the event. What makes this a particular shame is that Queen Noor of Jordan is the founder and chair of the King Hussein Foundation International, a non-profit, non-governmental organization that aims to foster peace and security through programs that promote cross cultural understanding and social, economic and political opportunity in the Muslim and Arab world -- a worthy cause that should be promoted as much as possible. We won’t be able to tell you about the good work that the foundation is doing, but if you are attending and want to tell us, please do.

For more on this click here.

Posted by Michael Francisco on May 07, 2007
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I was at the BIO media brunch earlier today to hear the results of two polls, one an internet survey of 252 US biotech executives and another a telephone survey of 800 registered US voters conducted between April 17 to April 19 by Public Opinion Strategies and Peter D. Hart Research Associates. The conclusions weren't exactly earth shattering.

By and large, the data confirmed what we already know: drugs and therapies for unmet needs are highly valued by the public; transgenic foods are not. Industry execs cited regulations and government intervention as their biggest bugbears. Funnily enough, very few of the biotech executives surveyed were at all keen to see the FDA develop a framework for follow-on biologics like that in Europe. No surprise there then!

And of course, everybody is very excited about the potential for biotech to create a country that is self-sufficient in terms of energy generation and "independent of foreign oil." According to the PR blurb, industry leaders and voters "share high levels of optimisim about the potential for finding cures, developing clean technologies to reduce pollution and creating 'green drug factories.'"

Continue reading "Survey trivia: the biotech-pharma dichotomy and GM food on steroids!" »

Posted by Andrew Marshall on May 06, 2007
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Simon Frantz, formerly of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery and now web editor at The Scientist , sends this report on yesterday's Bioentrepreneur Roundtable:

At the Nature Biotechnology Bioentrepreneur Roundtable on Saturday evening, I heard a rare degree of candidness among the speakers that I thought was worth opening up to discussion here. The roundtable was on funding trends, but as the panel included representatives, investors and entrepreneurs from around the globe, the subject of launching start-ups in areas outside of well-known bioclusters came to the fore. Investors and entrepreneurs agreed that if a start-up company is not within a recognized biocluster, such as Boston, San Francisco and San Diego, it will find it so much more difficult to generate interest and funding, that the advice for budding entrepreneurs was to move to a biocluster. Even creating a subsidiary unit creates enough logistical difficulties to consider moving lock, stock and barrel to a biocluster. The argument from the investors is that it doesn’t just take good science to create a successful company, good experienced managers are as important, if not more so, and investors are more likely to go to where the experience is.

It wasn’t all bad news; Singapore was mentioned as an example of how to build a biocluster from scratch. Nevertheless, this focus on recognized bioclusters surely misses out of a lot of top-notch R&D going on around the globe, and it wasn’t clear whether this investor mindset would change. The general consensus on this issue at the roundtable might make for some uncomfortable reading with many geographical areas attending the conference, but I’d be interested to hear whether this fits in with your experience, and what you think can be done to attract more attention and investment to areas outside of established bioclusters.

Posted by Michael Francisco on May 06, 2007
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Boston, with its history of protest going back to the Boston Tea Party, promises to live up to its reputation, if the press reports are to be believed. At least one group, Biodevastation to Biojustice, has announced a week-long event to coincide with BIO. The Boston press has gotten locals all worked up at the prospect of disruptions to traffic and commerce, though if past conventions are any measure, this might all be much ado about nothing.

We’ll see. In the meantime, BIO is coordinating with local, state and federal officials in monitoring the internet for possible threats and preparing contingency plans should disruptions occur, according to Jeff Joseph, BIO’s vice president of communications. Joseph points out that what makes Boston an attractive site for the convention -- the high concentration of research universities as well as biotech companies -- also makes it an attractive target for protests. Same was true, of course, in San Francisco in 2004, where the security guards outnumbered the protestors (Joseph admits they overestimated the threat that year).

Biojustice 2007 will be sponsoring panel discussions, a “Wake up the Earth” rally, and a puppet parade. You can find a complete listing of events if any of you want to meet the loyal opposition.

And of course, badges will be required at all times to enter the convention center and other official BIO venues.

Posted by Laura De Francesco on May 03, 2007
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It's always interesting to see who BIO gets to deliver the plenary speeches during breakfast and lunch at the convention. This year we have Michael J. Fox and Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan (who has, incidentally, banned the media from her speech). Over the years, it's been pretty impressive. Christopher Reeve spoke at the 2000 conference. Professional basketball player Jerry Stackhouse talked about his sisters' struggles with diabetes in 2003. Singer/songwriter Melissa Etheridge was onstage, guitar in hand, in 2005. For a while, you could trace an increase in name-power for speakers that neatly paralleled the rise of the biotech industry in the public eye, culminating with President Bush's appearance in 2003. There have been great speakers since then, of course -- former president Bill Clinton in 2006 comes to mind -- but it's hard to top the reigning commander in chief as a draw (regardless of Bush's stance on stem cells). For my money, though, my favorite speaker was Benjamin Carson in 2002. He doesn't have the name recognition of some of the other speakers at BIO, but I don't recall anyone else getting as many laughs, or engaging the audience, as he did while discussing the importance of healthcare and medicine. Who is he? A leading pediatric surgeon, gaining attention in 1987 for separating "Siamese twins" babies who were joined at the head. Here's some information from PBS on the man and his history. But that leads me to this: While flying back to the US from France, I sat through the 2003 movie, "Stuck On You," starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear. It's a Farrelly Brothers film about conjoined brothers. As the movie draws to its conclusion, the dual protagonists decide to be separated. I stared at the tiny airplane screen in front of me, at the surgeon who emerged from the operating room to comment on the health of his patients. He sure looked familiar. When I got home, I looked him up: Dr. Benjamin Carson, playing himself. He's listed in the credits, which you can find here. You sure can learn a lot at BIO.

Posted by Brady Huggett on April 24, 2007
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The BIO International Convention officially begins Sunday, May 6 (remember when BIO conferences started on a Monday, and Sunday was maybe going down to register?), with a full slate of activities, topped off by the Welcome Reception from 7:15 pm to 9 pm. (For a complete list of BIO events, click here.) But there are things to do on Saturday, too, for those who show up in Boston early -- most notably, I'd suggest, is another installment of Nature Biotechnology Bioentrepreneur Roundtable Series. We've held these both in the US and in Europe, and this will be our seventh. The topic is "Biotech Investment: The Importance of Taking the Lead," and it will be moderated by Nature Biotechnology editor Andrew Marshall, with a six-member panel consisting of insiders from around the globe. It's being held Saturday at the Marriott Boston Copley Place, beginning at 5 pm with a reception to follow. For more information, download the PDF here. What else are you going to do Saturday evening? The Red Sox are out of town.

Posted by Brady Huggett on April 24, 2007
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With the countdown clock at the 2007 BIO International Convention site at 15 days, 7 hours, 3 minutes and counting, Nature Publishing Group is pleased to kick off our blog coverage of the biotech industry's biggest event ever. Join us as the editors of Nature Biotechnology, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery and Nature Network Boston fill you in on what's happening in Boston. From the sessions to the exhibit halls to the parties, we'll report the goings-on and try to make sense of what promises to be an exciting but hectic convention.

In addition, we'll be bringing you regular dispatches from 3 veteran biotech industry executives: Edmundo Muniz, president and CEO of Tigris Pharmaceuticals, Sara Hall, founder, president and CEO of Tacere Therapeutics and Scott Salka, CEO of Ambit Biosciences. Look for their daily insights on the most pressing business development, management and funding issues for biotechs.

Posted by Michael Francisco on April 20, 2007
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