The Life Sciences Foundation – Telling the Story of Biotechnology

Posted under biotech industry, Biotechnology Industry, Blog, Business and Investments, Companies, Diagnostics, Funding, history, Life Science, Life Sciences Foundation, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Startups, Universities, Videos by biotechnow@bio.org (Biotechnology Industry Organization)

By the Life Sciences Foundation

“If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.”

- Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher (1653-1716)

Why History Matters

Biotechnologists are in the tomorrow business. They strive to innovate, invent, and make progress. They must; survival depends on it. Biotechnologists are future-oriented.

Yet, biotechnologists are also steeped in history. They swim in the past, and strive constantly to remember it. They must; survival depends on it. Biotechnologists are history-oriented.

Dubious? Consider this. In order to innovate, bench scientists must review technical literatures – histories of discoveries. In order to protect intellectual properties, patent attorneys must reconstruct and document histories of inventions. In order to secure funding, manage crises, and devise effective strategies for the success of life science companies, biotech executives must draw on business lessons, skills, reputations, and networks of relationships acquired over time. History matters crucially to these people.

In order to understand the present of the biotech industry and to plan for its future, participants are obliged to consider its past. The same is true for the general public, the press, and policymakers.  People can’t make good decisions about biotechnology if they don’t know its history.

The Mission of LSF

The Life Sciences Foundation (LSF) has been established to help people understand. LSF documents, preserves, and disseminates the history of the field – it tells the biotech story. The non-profit charity is headquartered in San Francisco. Regional chapters are in formation in Boston, San Diego, and other key centers of biotech research and development.

Industry leaders have recognized the pertinence and value of the project. Founding partners in LSF’s good work include Burrill & Company, Celgene, Eli Lilly & Co., Genentech, Genzyme, Merck, Millennium, Pfizer, Quintiles, and ThermoFisher.  Serving on the organization’s Executive Board are G. Steven Burrill, CEO of Burrill & Company, Joshua Boger, former Chairman and CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Dennis Gillings, Chairman and CEO of Quintiles, John Lechleiter, Chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly & Co., Henri Termeer, former Chairman and CEO of Genzyme, and Arnold Thackray, LSF President and CEO. Dr. Phillip Sharp, Institute Professor at MIT, serves as the organization’s academic advisor.

By various means (web presence, publications, archives, educational outreach programs, exhibitions, conferences, etc.), LSF seeks to raise levels of scientific and technological literacy, and to inform the public about the social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions of bioscientific progress.

The foundation’s small staff of writers, researchers, archivists, and educators has launched a highly-acclaimed, content-rich website (www.biotechhistory.org). The site features digital archives, photo and video galleries, illustrated historical timelines, articles about technologies and companies, and interviews with industry veterans. LSF is also publishing a tri-annual magazine, rescuing historical artifacts and papers, collecting oral histories from biotech pioneers, and conducting research for a major book on the origins and development of the commercial biotechnology industry – the first definitive history of the field at large.

Making History

LSF operates on the premise that history is a cultural force – but only if preserved and published.  It is an asset that must be deployed. So far, the biotech industry has not made good use of it. “See for yourself,” says Arnold Thackray, LSF President and CEO, “google ‘history of biotechnology.’ The results are fragmented, uneven, and rather paltry.”  Thackray also points out that “If you don’t write your own history, somebody else will do it for you, and they may be hostile.”

LSF Advisory Board co-Chair Joshua Boger echoes these sentiments: “Biotechnology is one of the most important drivers of progress in our time, but people generally don’t know us. They know little about what we do. They don’t know the stories. We’re looking at huge deficits in public understanding.”

Bits and pieces of the biotech story have surfaced, and some are captivating – The Billion Dollar Molecule by Barry Werth, a book about Boger’s company, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, is a fine example. But due to an overall paucity of popularizing accounts, the science remains imposing to lay audiences, and those who have made important contributions to the field remain mostly anonymous.

Informing the Public – the Importance of Biotechnology

LSF is trying to help biotechnology enhance its public profile. Mark Jones, the foundation’s Director of Research, believes the life sciences have been neglected: “Ask people on the street who was responsible for their iPhone or iPad. They’ll tell you. Millions rushed to bookstores to purchase the Steve Jobs biography. Jobs was a fascinating character, and Apple makes wonderful products, but life scientists are trying to save lives, feed the world, and solve our pressing energy problems. There is plenty of compelling drama in biotech. We intend to put it on exhibition.”

Jones explains that a big part of LSF’s mission is to ‘humanize’ the biosciences.  LSF intends to tell tales about people – scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs, managers, executives, and financiers – the men and women who work to advance scientific knowledge, generate technological innovations, secure material prosperity, and improve lives around the world.

These stories are full of color. They take place in laboratories and clinics, universities and research parks, pharmaceutical factories and chemical refineries, boardrooms and executive suites; on Sand Hill Road, Wall Street, Capitol Hill, and at the FDA; in the corn fields of Iowa, rice paddies in Asia, and African yam gardens; in the Gulf of Mexico, where genetically engineered microbes are cleaning up an oil spill, and the world’s oceans, where vast reserves of biodiversity are being mined for valuable goods.  Biotech stories are set wherever processes of life have been used to transform and enhance the human condition.

Arnold Thackray emphasizes that the message is for students, teachers, scholars, journalists, and policymakers. “There is a valuable heritage here. The life sciences will shape the course of the 21^st century. We need to preserve their history. We need to teach young people about the world in which they live.”

According to Thackray, the task is urgent; biotech industry is still young, but the founding generation is already passing away: “Records are being scattered, memories are fading, stories are disappearing. Once lost, they’re gone forever.”

How You Can Help LSF to Achieve its Mission

You will enable LSF to record history and increase public understanding of science and technology by:

• Spread the word that it is time to capture the rich heritage of biotechnology;
• Contact the foundation with information on archives, historical records and ancillary publications;
• Suggest candidates for the foundation’s oral history initiative (or develop a memoir of your own);

For more information visit the Life Sciences Foundation website. To sign up for the foundation’s newsletter or to contribute archival materials or ideas, email alicia@biotechhistory.org.

California Life Sciences to Partner with China

Posted under BIOCOM, Blog, China, Companies, Diagnostics, Emerging Markets, Funding, Global, IP, leadership, Life Science, Market Access, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, R&D, Startups, Universities, Videos by Ben Comer

BIOCOM, a trade group representing Southern California’s life sciences industry, is ramping up partnership efforts in China to meet an emerging desire for novel drug therapies.

While intellectual property (IP) protections and the Chinese government’s willingness to pay for expensive new products represent two large and lingering question marks, Joe Panetta, president and CEO at BIOCOM, said his last trip to China was surprising.

“We visited one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in China – Yangtze River Pharmaceuticals – which is pretty strongly government-backed and which has been long known to be a generics and traditional Chinese medicine company,” said Panetta, noting a statue of Mao Zedong in the company’s courtyard. “When I got there, not only did I see their long-established generics manufacturing facilities, but I also saw their 14- and 10-story innovative research towers that are under construction. They assured me that the future for them is not in generics, and the CEO said clearly to us: ‘I want to meet companies in San Diego, and I want to access new therapies that we can commercialize here.’”

Panetta said a portion of China’s population – by some estimates a portion as large as the total US population, according to Panetta – is becoming increasingly affluent, and has the “desire to access new therapies as well as the means to access new therapies.”

Despite a rising tide of affluence in major cities, many people living in China’s outer provinces are still in need of basic medical services, a problem China’s ambitious, $125 billion health reform initiative hopes to alleviate. “First they have to build delivery centers, and [the Chinese government] is talking about building hundreds of hospitals and thousands of clinics throughout the provinces in China, and they have to first deliver basic therapies and diagnostics and devices, but the question is how soon will it be before the government begins to take an interest in more innovative technologies,” said Panetta. “They have a long way to go, but to me, what that says is that there’s a lot of opportunity for a long time in China.”

The best way to enter the Chinese market is through partnerships, said Panetta, citing talks with companies residing in “large biotech parks in Shanghai and Beijing, and the China Medical City that’s being built from the ground up in Taizhou,” as well as US and European pharmaceutical companies that have a presence in China. “The Chinese would love for our companies to go over there and set up shop,” said Panetta. “What they tell us is that they want to learn how to innovate…I think the payback for our companies is clearly the 1.3 billion person market in China.”

BIOCOM hopes to facilitate partnerships with Chinese companies through conferences and trips to China, in order to “understand who we can build relationships with, what those relationships need to look like, and where we can build those relationships,” said Panetta. “[US] companies need to be careful about how much of their intellectual property they take to China when they create partnerships, and how much they keep [in the US],” said Panetta, and concerns remain about the level of talent and skill that exists, beyond the research level. “Several years ago, the discussion on Asia tended to gravitate toward outsourcing, low-cost research and low-cost early stage discovery efforts,” said Panetta. “That’s changed pretty drastically. It’s a terrific opportunity four our life sciences industry in Southern California,” he said.