British Columbia’s fast-growing biotechnology sector is attracting renewed interest from international companies and investors, and now a networking conference to bring together some of the most dynamic players in the industry is being planned for Vancouver for the second year in a row.

“B.C. has reached a real critical mass in terms of its biotech sector from large companies . . . down to small startups,” says Robert Lee Kilpatrick, a co-founder and partner of Technology Vision Group LLC of California, which is producing the BioPartnering North America (BPN) conference in Vancouver next month.

“It has a good venture capital base and financial base and a dedicated trade association in BC Biotech.”

The two-day conference, co-hosted by BC Biotech, Bio Alberta and BIOTECanada, is attracting international participation by both established companies and new, innovative startups, says Paul Stinson, executive director of the industry association BC Biotech, which represents 45 of the approximately 50 biotech companies in the province.

Among the international slate of companies planning to attend the February 8-10 event are B.C.-based companies Inimex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Forbes Medi-Tech Inc. and Chemokine Therapeutics Corp., as well as Calgary-based SemBioSys Genetics Inc., and Lorantis Ltd. of Cambridge, U.K., an emerging company that is developing a pipeline of protein and DNA therapeutics for the treatment of immune disorders.

Some companies have products in various stages of development for which they are seeking financial support or partnerships with other companies working in similar areas, while others are looking for products to fill their pipeline. They are given the opportunity to make presentations and to meet privately with other interested companies.

Asked if any deals or partnerships resulted from last year’s conference, Stinson says it is difficult to determine whether any came about as a direct result of BPN.

“Meeting at something like this is just one step,” he says, adding that some of the companies that met last year are still in discussion.

Stinson says Vancouver is the ideal location for BPN because the area has one of the most successful biotech clusters in North America.

“We have a group of companies here that are leaders in their field. And it’s still in its infancy,” Stinson says.

“Between 1991 and 2001 we ranked third after San Francisco and Boston in terms of numbers of companies that were developed in the cluster.”

He says that last year, B.C.’s public biotech companies attracted $756 million in financing, 45 per cent of the total financing for life sciences in Canada, while B.C. private companies got 34 per cent, or about $83.4 million, an amount he called “very significant.”

Technology Vision Group’s Kilpatrick also lauds Vancouver as a prime location.

“We think it is important to feature well-known, good, solid companies that are making progress with product development and maybe they have a new aspect of their story to tell, but we also like to showcase fresh faces,” says Kilpatrick.

The invitation-only event is being held at the Westing Bayshore Resort & Marina. Kilpatrick says many of the big pharmaceutical companies last year said they were pleasantly surprised to find companies from Western Canada that they didn’t know much about.

Conference sponsors also include Angiotech, Price-Waterhouse Coopers, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Simon Fraser University and RBC Financial Group.

RBC Royal Bank’s Nadia Ceciliot says the conference is a perfect fit for the company.

“We think that it is a great event for the life-sciences sector, for Western Canada, for North America. It’s a great networking opportunity,” says Ceciliot, a senior market manager for RBC’s IT and life-sciences department.

“If we get deals, that’s great, but it’s just the continuing presence that we have in the sector,” Ceciliot says.

“What we can bring these startup individuals’ companies is the network that we have developed, the value and the knowledge that we get.”

Ceciliot says RBC is well entrenched in the life sciences sector and has been the leading bank in that sector in Canada since the early 1990s.

BPN is modelled after a similar event in London, called BioPartnering Europe, which Technology Vision has produced for the past 11 years.

Kilpatrick says company participation at this year’s BPN is up by 25 per cent, with more than 700 delegates expected to attend. “If you have the right company there it can save a small company in B.C. thousands and thousands of dollars, because we do all the work,” he says.

Web watch:
www.techvision.com/bpn