RICHMOND, Va., Sept. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- The Virginia Biotechnology Summit, the annual meeting of the Virginia Biotechnology Association (VaBIO), will be held at the McLean Hilton Hotel on October 12-13, 2004. The Summit will feature more than twenty sessions on topics such as biodefense, medical devices, federal funding opportunities, gene therapy, intellectual property, product liability issues, bioinformatics, nanotechnology, venture capital and regulatory challenges at the FDA.
The featured speaker is Dr. Bert Adelman, executive vice president of Biogen-Idec, who will provide an inside view of the recent $6.4 billion merger of two of the world's largest biotechnology firms and the outlook for the bioscience industry in 2005. Biogen-Idec, the third largest biotechnology firm in the United States, expects to invest over $550 million per year in research and development, and has 1,000 R&D employees, including approximately 400 in discovery research.
More than 450 are expected to attend the Summit featuring major speeches by:
* Steen Riisgaard, the CEO of Copenhagen-based Novozymes A/S, the world
leader in industrial enzymes and microorganisms. With about 3,900
employees in 30 countries, the company is the dominant player in the
sale of industrial enzymes and microorganisms in the world today with
a global market share of more than 40% in both markets. With very few
exceptions, Novozymes has been behind every major discovery in the
field in the last 40 years.
* Also featured will be Drs. Gerald Rubin and Jeremy Levin, leaders from
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Novartis Institute for
Biomedical Research, two of the largest private biomedical research
institutes in the world, who will give presentations about their new
multi-million dollar scientific campuses.
* John Crowley, CEO of Orexigen Therapeutics and Geeta Anand of the Wall
Street Journal. Mr. Crowley's emotion-packed presentation will focus
on one man's personal struggle to find a cure for his children
suffering from Pompe disease, a rare and fatal illness that is caused
by a defective or missing enzyme. His answer? To launch a start-up
pharmaceutical company devoted expressly to finding a cure for the
disease. It is an amazing story that has been highlighted in the Wall
Street Journal and numerous network television programs -- John
Crowley borrowed money to start his biotech company, hired researchers
and actually identified a promising enzyme. With his data in hand, he
raised $27 million in venture capital. When it became clear that the
best way to help his children would be to bring in the resources of a
big company, he sold his firm to Genzyme for $137.5 million.
Major sponsors include: IBM Life Sciences; Scheer Partners; the University of Virginia; Mintz Levin PC; Virginia Tech; Foley & Lardner; George Mason University; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr; Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology; Fish and Richardson; and Virginia Commonwealth University. Registration is $239 ($159 for VaBIO members). For more information about the Summit, or to register for general attendance, please visit http://www.vabio.org/, or call (540) 231-5182.
About VaBIO
VaBIO, the Virginia Biotechnology Association, is the 200-member statewide trade group that promotes the considerable scientific and economic impact of the life sciences industry in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Association is headquartered at the Virginia Bio-Technology Research Park, in Richmond, Virginia. For more information, contact Mark Herzog, executive director, or visit http://www.vabio.org/.
Virginia Biotechnology AssociationCONTACT: Mark A. Herzog, Executive Director of the VirginiaBiotechnology Association, +1-804-643-6360, mherzog@vabio.org; or for mediabadges: Jane Todd of Virginia Tech, +1-540-231-2014, janetodd@vt.edu
Web site: http://www.vabio.org/
