The Institute of Pharmaceutical Innovation

Thursday 24th May, 2007 UKTI press release highlighting IPI visit to BIO 2007

BIO 2007 IS BIG BIO BUSINESS

Even by the standards of the United States, the 2007 Bio International Conference in Boston is quite a production number. The biggest gathering of biotech leaders, public officials and companies in the world, this year it attracted over 20,000 people, and boasted over 1,900 exhibitors spread around 60 pavilions, representing as many countries.

UK Trade & Investment showcased the UK’s biotech industry in the British pavilion by staging both a specially arranged ‘partnering’ event, and a Chief Executives’ dinner, whilst main events offered everything from keynote speakers like HM Queen Noor of Jordan on the global impact of biotechnology, and film actor Michael J Fox about the need for basic research into human conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease, to world-leading academic and business experts discussing their visions for the future of biotech. In the sidelines to all of this were entertainers and all manner of distraction for the thousands of delegates.

But for many in the group of ten biotech specialists from Yorkshire and Humber led by UKTI Sector Specialist Alastair Gardner, the appeal was not in the razzamatazz, but in the Bio Business Forum running alongside the main event and the opportunities it offered individuals and companies to take part in over 11,000 ‘partnering’ meetings exploring a fast-growing and diverse market which ranges widely from devices and diagnostics, food and agriculture, to pharmaceuticals, and industrial and environmental biotech.

For those who had attended such an internationally significant event before, like Bradford University’s Institute for Pharmaceutical Innovation (IPI), expectations were high.

Said IPI’s Riddhi Shukla:

We arrived in Boston with 25 half-hour meetings with likely partners already scheduled – a great starting point. Having attended Bio 2005 we knew just how helpful these partnership sessions could be. The earlier event generated some genuine business results for us so we built this year’s attendance into our communications strategy, sending as many as 83 advance e-mails to companies with whom we felt we might have synergy. We have not been disappointed. We have strengthened some existing relationships, made new connections, and generally raised the company’s professional profile. As expected the event was an exhausting, full-on experience but now the real work begins as we painstakingly do the follow up back at base.

David Haddow of first-time participants CellTran of Sheffield, summed it up this way:

“Our sights are on licensing opportunities for our portfolio of advanced wound care products, and the opportunity to meet a large number of potential partners all in one go was just too good to resist, and the UKTI support in terms of brokering attendance and contacts was invaluable.”

For AGTC Bio Products of Hessle in East Yorkshire, a supplier of reagents and chemicals used in life science research, the UKTI mission was a timely opportunity to showcase itself and develop some useful contacts ahead of the opening of the company’s new US subsidiary office in Boston this autumn.

Said Bob Russell of AGTC:

“The company has used UKTI services like OMIS before, so we were only too delighted to be included in this supported mission, if only to demonstrate to our customers that we really do exist beyond our web-presence. Ours is a niche field and with one body like the National Institute for Health (NIH) in the States as big as all the London research institutes put together in terms of research spending, it was incredibly important to the success of our new US venture to have made these contacts now.”

With its sights on the future of UK bioscience, the UKTI-led group was a strong and diverse one, featuring as it did a Queen’s Award winner, animal husbandry bio-science specialists Ecosyl Products Ltd of Stokesley, York-based intellectual property solicitor, Eileen Davis, pharmaceutical specialist York Pharma PLC and teams from the Sheffield Bioincubator, and the Universities of Leeds, and Sheffield, who were all keen to explore R&D partnership opportunities with inward investors.