Back to the Future: BIO 2007 Opens in Boston

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Reported by Annette Kreuger, Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). The world’s largest gathering of key players in the biotech industry are making their way to Boston this week for the annual Biotechnology Industry Organization’s (BIO) conference (May 6-9). Promising to be the biggest BIO conference yet, organizers expect over 20,000 attendees, comprised of a vast array of people including government officials, scientists and CEOs. Rich with iconic landmarks from key moments in America’s history, today Boston welcomes the global visionaries of tomorrow. All of them seeking to cure, clean up and improve our planet through biotech. And if a healthy profit is made while doing so, so much the better.

Greater Boston is considered by many to be the very heart of biotech, with its dense concentration of biotech company headquarters, research centers and stellar intellectual capital. The city last hosted the conference in 2000 with approximately 10,000 in attendance. Home to some of the world’s top research universities and hospitals, for many, a visit to this year’s convention will be a short cab ride from the office. An estimated one third of the world’s biotech companies have a presence in the area and as of December 2006, Massachusetts leads the nation in per-capita NIH funding.

All three floors of Boston’s impressive new convention and exhibition (BCEC) center are filled with a vast array of exhibits, breakout business sessions and forums. Too big to be contained within the sizeable confines of the BCEC, BIO 2007 meetings and events have spilled out across the city and surrounding areas. Buses filled with some of the world’s best and brightest are headed everywhere from the hallowed research centers of Harvard and MIT, to Novartis’ stunning Cambridge campus.

BIO 2007 will feature 1,900 exhibitors, 60 pavilions and 60 countries. Once compared as the nerdy science sector in comparison to glam sibling Pharma, the industry has rapidly leveled the playing field. With market capitalization (U.S.) zooming to $410 billion in 2005, biotech is indeed a major player. Biotech has sourced over 400 drug products and vaccines currently in clinical trials targeting more than 200 diseases, including various cancers, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, AIDS and arthritis. While Big Pharma players like Pfizer continue to close plants across the world, Bio Bigwigs, including Amgen, Genentech and Genzyme, are spending billions for new manufacturing plants and research centers.

There are myriad reasons to be in Boston this spring for BIO 2007. Some are attending seeking the astronomical funding needed to bring a drug to market, while others are offering up their locales as the ideal spot to construct a $300 to $1,000 per square foot biotech research or manufacturing facility. The not untypical scenario of a Chinese biotech company that has its research lab in Vancouver, British Columbia looking to form alliances with partners to manufacture drugs at their plant in China illustrates the global presence at the conference.

While the conference is all about change, some things indeed are the same. The erstwhile protestestors are in full force, still somewhat ridiculous as in years past. Targeting everything from stem cell research to genetically modified food, a vocal crowd paraded around Boston’s famed Faneuil Hall Sunday night, scheduled to coincide with the BIO 2007 welcome reception being held onsite. It is hard to listen to reason from someone dressed in a mock biohazard suite waving a giant carrot. Harder yet when they will not or perhaps, one must venture, cannot say anything beyond a memorized, monotonous chant.

Check back for daily updates from the show. Top highlights will be covered. Find out who is building what, where and why. Particular focus will be placed on both established and emerging biotech hubs across the world.

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