North America's biotech industry has undergone changes that have ultimately built a stronger sector, say backers of a major conference to be held in Vancouver next month.
While the overall number of biotech firms has declined in the past year due to weak financial markets - causing some companies to merge - those players that remain have gained strength and secured a growing number of product approvals, says Robert Kilpatrick, an organizer of the third annual BioPartnering North America conference to be held Feb. 6-8.
"I would say it's a robust, developing industry that is changing, but strengthening," says Kilpatrick, a partner in Technology Vision Group LLC (TVG) of Santa Cruz, Calif. He cites B.C.'s vibrant bioscience community and support from industry and government as reasons why Vancouver is hosting the conference. Interest in the event has "far exceeded our expectations," he says.
The conference, produced and hosted by TVG, BC Biotech, BioAlberta and BIOTECanada, will bring together executives from pharmaceutical, biotech and financial sectors to facilitate partnerships and deal-making.
As well, TVG has introduced a $10,000 bursary for college students contemplating a career in biotechnology.
Selected applicants will have their expenses paid to attend the conference.
"Ultimately the purpose of the conference is to help fill the pipelines of the larger companies and help the younger companies get the capital they need to evolve," Kilpatrick says.
"They give presentations and have private meetings. All the discussion groups and workshops are specifically geared to every aspect of doing a deal."
Kilpatrick says the total number of delegates and companies registered to date is up from last year's attendance of approximately 700.
Registrations from pharmaceutical companies, whose presence is vital for the success of a partnering conference, are already up by 20 per cent.
That's good news for companies such as Mississauga, Ont.-based YM BioSciences Inc., a cancer drug development firm looking to network with pharmaceutical companies to manufacture and market its drug products.
YM BioSciences attended last year's conference, and although no deals were reached by the firm, new relationships were formed, says CEO David Allan.
"What we are principally going there for is to make sure that those who are looking for partnering opportunities keep us front and centre in mind," says Allan. "It's like a market. You show your wares. You go down to the market and you look at the buns and you look at the cabbages and you look at the tomatoes. And people aren't actually hawking them at you, but they're on display."
BioVex Ltd. of Oxford, England, which is developing a new class of potent vaccines for the prevention and treatment of cancer and chronic infectious disease, has been attending the conference since it began.
"It's alerting, particularly the pharmaceutical industry - the big pharm companies - about what we are doing as we move our products through clinical trials," says Tony Mills, vice-president of business development.
There are many biotech gatherings around the world, but the Vancouver event is among the best for networking, says Mills. "You tend to get intangibles. You get just a good feeling about being known in the industry and people remember you."
He says the B.C. conference provides the opportunity to connect with Pacific Rim contacts, such as those from Australia that can't get to the East Coast as easily as Vancouver. BioVex will present its three technology platforms, based on the manipulation of the herpes simplex Type 1 virus, at the conference's open house.
Another company that has been at BioPartnering since the start is Vancouver-based Inimex Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a three-year-old firm that grew out of anti-microbial research done at the University of British Columbia.
"Business development is really the ongoing creation of relationships that ultimately end up in contracts," notes Roger Graham, vice-president of corporate development."
He says the company is always seeking new licensing opportunities, and the conference opens the door by facilitating a series of 20 half-hour meetings with potential partners and clients.
Inimex is not actively looking for financial backers, having just closed its first round of venture capital financing in October for about $8 million.
The company will look for a second round of financing this spring to further its development of cutting-edge therapies for immune system disorders, Graham says.
While recent recalls of high-profile drugs such as Vioxx might be on some peoples' minds at the conference, BioPartnering isn't a forum for such controversies, says Kilpatrick.
"You'll notice that all these product failures or holdbacks have all been in the pharma industry, not in the biotech industry," he says. "It's not really a reflection on the biotech industry."
Kilpatrick says the Asian Pacific influence is making an impact on biotech, as it has in other sectors. "India has a substantial generic pharmaceutical industry. They take anything they can get their hands on legally, and in some cases illegally, and make generic copies of it and sell it throughout Asia and they're trying to expand that globally," he says.
"China is on some kind of course to try to attract the bulk of the world's manufacturing capability there, in every industry. They are determined to be very active players in biotech."
According to recent media reports, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's (CSIS) annual report to Parliament warns that foreign countries are seeking to acquire classified information from Canada's science and technological sectors, including biotech. China, in particular, is seen as the most aggressive in illegally acquiring that technology.
A number of Chinese companies have been active in trying to woo North American-trained Chinese Americans and Chinese Canadians to work there, Kilpatrick notes.
"Visit any lab in Canada, or any lab in the United States or any lab in Europe of a company of world stature, and it will be a United Nations in the lab," he says. "It's always been that way."
Many of those biotech workers are returning to their native countries, attracting venture capital and creating new companies, he adds.
Kilpatrick stresses that biotech knowledge is used for more than just the development of human applications, such as drugs and therapeutics.
That is especially important to a country such as China, which has no oil, in its quest to develop other energy sources, he says.
(Jan Mansfield can be reached at jan@businessedge.ca)
