CONFERENCE REPORT Record Attendance at BIO 2000

Applied Genetics News, April, 2000

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) held its annual international meeting and exhibition, BIO 2000, at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston from March 26-March 30, 2000. This year's conference almost doubled in size from the previous year, from 5,700 to over 10,000 registered attendees, resulting in standing room only for many of the popular sessions. The BIO 2000 provided a platform for spirited discourse concerning the issues relevant to the rapidly growing biotechnology industry. The highlights of the meeting were:

The future of genomics: A panel that included William Haseltine (Human Genome Sciences), Randall Scott (Incyte Pharmaceuticals), and Mark Levin (Millennium Pharmaceuticals) discussed the post-genomics era. It was pointed out that the impact of the genomics revolution can be gauged by the fact that in the pre- genomics era it would take 5 to 10 years to discover a gene, purify its protein product and then clone it.

In the post genomics era, a simple scanning of the genomics database would find that gene within minutes. From knowledge of about 2,000 genes in 1990, today there is information on about 100,000 genes. The panel agreed that with the dwindling product pipeline of big pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and genomics companies have an opportunity to attract investors. It was also suggested that mergers between biotechnology and/or genomic companies are likely to increase for companies to stay competitive.

Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine: The Center for Tissue Engineering at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester has developed a technology by which cells from a patient biopsy are obtained and then propagated in culture, attached to a three-dimensional synthetic polymer scaffold and delivered back into the patient to generate new tissue. This has been done with several tissue types including bone and cartilage.

Another development discussed was the "spore-like cell," so termed because it is smaller than any previously described cell and has almost all nuclear material and very little cytoplasm. This cell has very low-oxygen consumption and remains dormant until injury. After injury it is turned on and begins to multiply and is responsible for the body's repair. Researchers have isolated these cells from exteriorized mammalian tissue, which are viable and then cultured so that they multiply and differentiate into tissues, just like the ones from which they were isolated. This finding may have implications in regenerating new tissue in vitro for therapeutic use.

Organ transplantation: Current organ transplantation involves the dosing of the organ recipient with immunosuppressive drugs to prevent organ rejection. David Sachs of Massachusetts General Hospital and Joseph Davie of Biogen discussed the progress made in organ transplant in a session titled "Putting The Immune System to Work: Understanding Control Points in Immune Reactivity." David Sachs described his work in transplantation of swine organs into humans. Joseph Davie reported success with anti-CD40 ligand antibodies in maintaining kidney allografts in mice. The anti-CD40 ligand antibodies are likely to induce a form of peripheral tolerance by stimulating apoptosis of T cells, the major perpetrators of organ rejection.

Bioinformatics and proteomics: The role of bioinformatics in the genomics and post genomics era was elaborated. Beyond the human gene sequence, protein structure is the next horizon for bioinformatics. Computational biologists are now developing bioinformatics software to decipher the 3-D structure of a protein given its genome sequence. For example, Structural Genomix, a start-up company in San Diego, is developing high throughput experimental methods to determine protein structures.

Biotechnology and the internet: Numerous business to business and business to customer sites are in development that provide a portal for information and marketing of drug discovery technology, laboratory research tools/reagents, bioinformatics and health, and disease issues. The discussion panel at BIO 2000 agreed that the biotechnology business had been slow to embrace e-business but has made progress in the recent past. The major areas where biotechnology e- business may prosper are communities for physicians, patients and researchers; supplies procurement; clinical trials; direct-to-consumer and direct-to- physician marketing; and research & development. Health information on the Internet (e-health) may be the fastest developing as seen by the large amount of venture capital in health information start-up Internet sites (e.g. cancerfacts.com).

Management challenges: Management issues facing the biotechnology industry were discussed by a panel composed of Patrick Gage (Wyeth-Ayerst Research), Gordon Binder (Amgen), William Haseltine (Human Genome Sciences), Ernesto Bertarelli (Ares-Serono), and Jacques Lapointe (BioChem Pharma). Some of the issues that biotechnology industry managers face include negative viewpoints of the industry, lack of vision, challenges of global marketplace, and the need to expand on areas of focus to remain competitive. It was also pointed out that the availability of financing and collaborators is the best it has ever been for the industry.