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Industrial Biotech Summit Convenes in San Diego

Biotechnology community representatives from around the state gathered in downtown San Diego on Sept. 15 and 16 to take stock of the fast-growing industry at the California Industrial Biotech Conference.

“This is essentially a summit meeting on industrial biotech,” said Gail Maderis, president and chief executive officer of BayBio, a trade association serving the life sciences industry of Northern California. “The industrial biotech field is a relatively small but very fast-growing sector of the industry, with an emphasis on clean fuels, global warming, environmental remediation and going green.”

About 150 people turned out for the opening day of the conference at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. The group included scientists, investors, educators and marketers. The conference was hosted by BayBio and San Diego-based Biocom. Biocom is the largest regional life sciences association in the world, representing more than 550 member companies in Southern California. Northern California’s BayBio has the support of more than 450 member organizations.

California is well-suited to contribute to the growth of the industry, said Joe Panetta, president and CEO of Biocom. One of his group’s goals is to make sure that the region remains globally competitive.

“We want to promote the advantages of being here,” Panetta said. “It is still a fledgling industry here but it has tremendous potential for future growth.”

Record-Setting Growth

Many solutions to environmental problems involve biotechnology, Maderis said. “This conference is focused on the industry’s current players and the support infrastructure around those players. We have representatives from venture capital companies that are backing and financing this industry.”

In the future we will see agricultural-based fuels supplementing oil-based products, said M. Wainwright Fishburn Jr., a founding partner of Cooley LLP’s San Diego office and vice chairman of Biocom. “You also see product opportunities in the area of animal feed.”

California’s industrial biotechnology sector experienced record-setting growth over 2009, a new statewide survey by Biocom and BayBio has found. According to the California Industrial Biotechnology Workforce Survey, industrial biotechnology companies — those focused on biofuels, feedstock and green industrial chemicals — grew 19 percent between 2009 and 2010. Over the last five years, the segment grew 50 percent.

Greg Mitchell, associate director of the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, delivered the Sept. 15 keynote presentation at the conference. He said cultivated algae could play an important role in creating new livestock feed, if research and development are properly financed and supported. Developing a new source of protein for animals could result in significant water savings.

In the San Diego region’s thriving biotech industry, “algae could be among the things that are next,” the research biologist said.

UCSD the Catalyst

Studies at UC San Diego have served as a catalyst for the region’s biotech industry, Mitchell asserted. “We have a major global center for biotechnology … The reason we have a biotech industry in San Diego is because of UCSD.”

To advance algae research, “we need to get society on board,” he said. “We need to continue to feed the basic engine of discovery.”

There are many reasons to care about the future of biotech, Marney Cox, chief economist of the San Diego Association of Governments, said outside the conference. Biotech accounts for about half of the venture capital funds that flow to the San Diego region, he said.

“In terms of jobs, they are probably the third-largest traded cluster we have in the region,” Cox said.

“Biotech contributes about $2.8 billion to the local economy, so they are very important to us,” he added.

According to Maderis, growth in the biotech industry could help offset the loss of good-paying jobs in the U.S. as manufacturing has declined.

“For every biotech job there are about 5.5 indirect jobs that are created,” she said. “That is everything from construction workers to lawyers who file patents for the researchers to the caterers that bring in lunches when they have partnering meetings. There is a significant amount of jobs at all levels, both skilled and unskilled, that goes to support every job in biotech.”

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