BIO Conference

PHILADELPHIA -- Not everyone buys into the vision of the new biology economy, where advances in the life sciences, and the commercialization of innovation, will ultimately benefit the sick, and help the healthy stay that way.

On Sunday, at start of the annual Biotechnology Industry Organization conference that ends Wednesday, there were no signs of a robust democratic conversation about the benefits of biotech, but a great divide.

Inside the block-long halls of the Philadelphia convention center, yellow-jacketed ushers backed up by blue-shirted police officers guarded entrances to the facilities. Even to get to the registration area, one had to personally give a reason for being there in order to pass through.

I again tried to get a media credential (see previous post), thinking my honest face, notebook, green tie and jacket, might convince the gatekeepers to let me enter this gathering of the industry's powers. Nope.

But, after walking around the center in the afternoon, I understood why show organizers were so cautious. Sunday was a slow day for the conference -- and for protesters. I saw one 20-something woman walking on the street with a sign saying: "Free the Corn" -- apparently in protest against genetically modified corn, although she might have been against the hot-water torture suffered by tender ears at this time of year. Other young people in skate-board shorts, t-shirts and dreadlocks, were setting up posters and signs protesting animal testing. Suits inside, shorts outside, and cops in the middle.

I did manage to get by one set of gatekeepers, long enough to grab about five press releases set in a hallway. I exited one building and went to a second only there to meet a guard, who politely said I couldn't get in. I politely didn't try.

The one activity that was somewhat open to the public was a job fair held in the Marriott. If you showed a resume, you were allowed to enter this event. [Disclosure: I am actively seeking employment to support my writing habit]. I was allowed to enter. Inside was the typical corporate job fair. Curtained booths, recruiters on one side of the table, job seekers on the other. Some 40 companies -- pharma, biotech, tool vendors, consultancies, and temporary agencies -- were assembled. The lines were long, but moved quickly. I counted as many as 60 people waiting in line to give their elevator pitches and resumes to Merck. Other pharma companies had lines of as many as 40 people waiting to speak to as many as five recruiters. On this Fathers' Day, some job-seekers were pushing strollers, others held their youngsters hands as they stepped up to speak to a recruiter. Dress ranged from corporate casual, to suits-and-ties and black pantsuits. Wyeth, which provided bottled water, got its message out to all the booths, as even recruiters from competing pharmas were sipping water from Wyeth-branded bottles.

The lines were partitioned into scientists/engineers and sales/other, which was a much shorter wait. Once you got to the head of the line, you gave your resume to the recruiter, who set it onto an ever-increasing pile on a nearby chair, and were usually referrred to the company's website. Often the recruiter would say that the website wasn't simply a black hole into which your resume disappeared, but it would function to place your digital info directly into the hands of a specific hiring manager, who would review it.

I was most impressed by Genentech, with its staff who genuinely seemed happy to be at this event, including a recruiter who told me, "We are looking for writers." I said the view from 1 DNA Way in South San Francisco would be an inspiration. With strong eye-contact, a firm handshake and a smile, I dropped off my resume at all of the largest pharma and biotechnology companies, as well as with a Federal recruiter.

I also picked up a handful of giveaways. Johnson and Johnson gave away some toothpaste and a corkscrew. The NIH was giving away a keyfob with a blue diode light on it; Adsumo, the organizers of the fair, gave away a keyfob with thermometer and compass. Genentech had a huge pile of neon green plastic wristbands, with this inscribed on it: Biotechnology=Hope. I don't think that equation is accurate. It should read Biotechnology=~Hope. Anyway, having one of those bracelets on, next to my yellow Lance Armstrong LIVESTRONG bracelet, did get me through a set of gates.

Online, I met a 50-something job seeker with an extensive resume in pharma looking for a position in biopressing engineering. He was ready to relocate, but not to California, where he said the cost of living is too high.

In another line, I heard a man who said he had a master's degree in project management and an MBA on top of an undergraduate degree in chemical biology, explain to a fellow line-stander that he was there to change from his current line of work, selling health insurance.

In another line, a woman with a degree in social work, struck up a conversation with a man from a large pharma company. He said he was looking to leave the company, which has been in the news lately announcing layoffs. She gave him her resume and asked if he could get her in for an interview before he left. He said he would try.

GenomeCanada has to get points for creativity. The organization had a booth at the job fair and was giving away small Canadian flag lapel pins with blinking diodes. We spoke with John ApSimon, exectuve director of Canada Research and chairman of the board of the Ottawa Life Sciences Council, as well as Marcel Chartrand, VP of communciations, GenomeCanada. ApSimon invited us to BIONorth, Canada's biotech conference, to be held in late November in Ottawa. He said I would not encounter the bureacratic barriers to blogging that conference that I have in Philly. I may take him up on the offer. Canada has just passed a budget of $165 million for genomic research, making a total of CAN $800 million ($648 million at today's exchange rate) over the last five years. ApSimon said that projects approved for this funding have to have a component that leads to commercialization over a 5- to 7-year-period. He said one project thus far will soon commercialize a mass spectrometer for proteomic applications. "We brought it to Parliament Hill to show them how it works," he said. Additionally, Alberta will be opening Canada's sixth genome center. "That's news," he said.

The most interesting chat we had was with Joseph Stunzi, a high school sophomore from Watinsville, Ga., who was competing in the science fair. Stunzi was selected as the top young scientist in 2003, when he was 14 years old. No 15, Stunzi is looking forward to turning 16 and being able to do government research, he told us. Stunzi, the son of a music teacher mother, and an engineer dad, was displaying a poster covering a research project on bacterial food poisoning in animals. Stunzi has found that feeding green tea, camomille, or hops to chickens may have some benefit in preventing clostridum poisoning.

We hope to return to Philadelphia tomorrow for the final day of BIO. We have in hand a $10 ticket there on the Chinatown bus, and $10 for the return fare.

The one-day trip to BIO on Sunday cost: $10 for gas shared with a friend who had rented a vehicle for the day; $5 for tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike; $3.50 for the shuttle train to the convention center; $11 for a fantastic dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in Philly's Chinatown (we shared a green papaya salad, Pho soup, and make-your-own grilled pork barbecue lettuce rollups); and $10 for the return trip to New York on the Chinatown bus. Additionally, there was a cup of Starbucks coffee in the morning: $2.00. I made homemade chicken salad sandwiches for our lunch. Getting back into New York after the three-hour bus trip, dinner was a McDonald's Happy Meal for $2.70. Subway home was $2. Total cost for the day was $37.20.

One last note, the good folks at Biogen Idec were giving away pedometers, a little device you wear on your hip that counts paces. At the end of the day, I had clicked off 19,682 paces, which is about 9.3 miles.