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BioWorld Today: Economy Cuts Attendance but Not Fervor as BIO Heads South

The Biotechnology Industry Organization's international convention comes to town amid global economic woes - not to mention trailing fears of the H1N1 swine flu epidemic - yet the industry's enthusiasm for the annual event remains as high as ever, perhaps even more so in the face of tough challenges ahead. As many predicted, attendance for this year's meeting is down about 35 percent to 40 percent from the number of people that attended last year's convention in San Diego.

BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood said about 12,000 to 15,000 attendees are expected this week. "Every year we've done the event, the attendance had gone up," all the way through 2007 when the Boston meeting attracted a whopping 22,000, he said. Attendance for last year's meeting in San Diego dipped about 10 percent to 20,000 people. "That was the beginning of the impact of the recession," he told BioWorld Today. "Now we're feeling the full impact." In many cases, firms simply are sending fewer people to cut down on travel and conference costs. And Atlanta, far from the big biotech hubs of Boston and the West Coast, is unlikely to attract those last-minute attendees. One of the reasons for the attendance spike during the 2007 convention in Boston was that "a lot of people made up their minds to go at the last minute, drove in and made a day trip of it," Greenwood said.

In Atlanta, "that's not likely to occur." And the global reports of swine flu initially looked like they might present an added deterrent to this year's attendance, but that cloud appears to have passed, and there haven't been any cancellations due to fears of the epidemic, Greenwood said. But while this year's conference might comprise a smaller crowd, sponsorship has not declined - Greenwood said BIO reported a total of $7 million in sponsorship for the conference - and "the quality of the attendance is still expected to be high. "And business development and partnership meetings still are a big draw for attendees," he added. "We still may even break the all-time one-on-one meetings [record] this year." 'No Substitute for Human Contact' Even as biotechs focus to preserve cash, many will make the annual BIO convention a priority. This year's conference boasts a line-up of 25 large-cap biotech and pharma firms and as many as 130 biotechs, and those are only the firms on the presentation schedule.

For many attendees, the focus will be on business development, as partnerships and collaborations, always a key part of the industry, take on even greater importance in tough economic times. And BIO offers companies a chance to connect with partners and potential partners face-to-face. "There is no substitute for human contact," said Tom Hughes, president and CEO of privately held Zafgen Inc., of Cambridge, Mass. And BIO "provides a terrific venue for formal and informal meetings." Zafgen, which is developing therapeutics to treat obesity based on vascular targeting in adipose tissue, expects to take the opportunity to meet personally with several of its vendors during the four-day conference. John Hollway, senior vice president of corporate development at South San Francisco-based Achaogen Inc., said his firm is in active partnering discussions around ACHN-490, a broad-spectrum hospital antibacterial product in Phase I for serious systemic and respiratory infections, and sees the BIO meeting as an "opportunity to introduce potential partners" to the company's antibacterial pipeline. And even with a European anti-infective meeting overlapping with BIO, Hollway said, "far more of the people I need to see in the anti-infectives world will be at BIO."

CyDex Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s CEO, Ted Odlaug, also will be involved in a number of partnering meetings during the conference. The firm offers its Captisol drug delivery technology and also has a nasal spray budesonide/azelastine product that recently completed Phase II proof of concept and needs a partner. Odlaug, who took over as CEO last fall, has made it a priority for the firm to attend more meetings in 2009. "It's all about the company getting additional exposure and letting people know what we're trying to achieve," he told BioWorld Today. CyDex, based in Lenexa, Kan., also will be on hand to drum up interest in that state's young, but growing biotech sector. Another small firm hoping to get the word out at BIO is Zealand Pharma A/S, of Glostrup, Denmark, which will be presenting at a roundtable discussion with partner Sanofi-Aventis to highlight the importance of diabetes research and development. The two firms have been collaborating since 2003 and are in Phase III testing with a lead candidate, ZP10/AVE0010, a glucagon-like peptide receptor agonist.

Zealand CEO David Solomon said his goal at BIO is to "have the broad audience understand how to move innovative science to the forefront of large pharma development" and to showcase "our long-standing and fruitful relationship with Sanofi-Aventis." Other firms see BIO as sort of a coming-out party. For Rexahn Pharmaceuticals Inc., for instance, this year's meeting represents its "emergence from stealth mode," said CEO Chang Ahn. The Rockville, Md.-based firm has been working on three drugs - Archexin in pancreatic cancer, Zoraxel in sexual dysfunction and Serdaxin in depression and anxiety - and with encouraging data from Phase II studies in hand, "we now want to aggressively get the Rexahn opportunity story out to the biopharmaceutical marketplace."

The international scope of the annual BIO conventions also is what draws industry attention. About a third of the attendees are expected to be from companies outside the U.S. Martin Wiles, executive vice president of BioInvent International AB, arrives in Atlanta from Lund, Sweden, hoping to continue the antibody's firm traditional of partnering on an international scale. "BIO remains one of a handful of key events throughout the year that has a laser-like focus on forging such partnerships," he said. But it's not just small biotechs that are eager to attend the convention. Greg Wiederrecht, vice president and head of external scientific affairs for Merck Research Laboratories, said the big pharma firm will be bringing "a large group of scientists, licensing professional and business development professionals" to BIO.

The Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based pharma has been particularly busy so far this year, signing large collaborations with firms such as Galapagos NV and Cardiome Pharma Corp., as well as the pending $40 billion merger with Schering-Plough Corp. But the company continues to be interested in "partnerships with academic institutions, government institutions, biotech and pharma," Wiederrecht said. And BIO brings all those organizations together, in addition to venture capitalists, economic development staff, analysts and other industry experts, giving busy execs the chance to get a lot done in just a short period of time. "

BIO offers us a concentrated time in which to meet potential partners, convene with our colleagues in research, highlight our R&D programs and dig deeper into issues impacting the regulatory and legislative climate for biotech," said Don deBethizy, CEO of Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Targacept. "It's very intense, and that's part of the value." PTC Therapeutics Inc., which is developing small-molecule PTC124 for genetic disorders resulting from nonsense mutations, also has a packed schedule at this year's BIO, said Claudia Hirawat, senior vice president of corporate development, who called the annual conference an "extremely valuable opportunity to condense investor relations, business development, clinical development, marketing and alliance management meetings into one trip."

—By Jennifer Boggs, Assistant Managing Editor - BioWorld Today

from BioWorld Today THE DAILY BIOTECHNOLOGY NEWSPAPER Monday, May 18, 2009 | Volume 20, No. 94 BIO 2009