Staff Writer

The Human Genome Project had yet to be completed and only one targeted cancer therapy was on the market when attendees of the annual BIO International Convention descended on Boston in March 2000.

What a difference seven years makes.

In 2000, 10,292 biotech executives, scientists, venture capitalists, industry experts and media members attended the annual conference, which was held at the Hynes Convention Center. In its return to Beantown this week, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) opted for the new 1.7 million square-foot Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in anticipation of a headcount of more than 20,000 people coming from 49 U.S. states, plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, and from more than 60 countries across the globe, reported BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood.

That growth mirrors the industry as a whole, which has come a long way since biotech popped up on the business radar about 30 years ago and has made rapid strides during the past seven years. In 2000, there were 125 biotech drugs on the market. Today, there are 254, "with several hundred coming up in development pipelines," Greenwood said. And in 2000, only one targeted cancer therapy had gained the FDA's blessing, South San Francisco-based Genentech Inc.'s Herceptin (trastuzumab), which targets HER2 breast cancer. Since then, Rituxan (Genentech, Biogen Idec Inc.), Campath (Genzyme Corp.), Gleevec (Novartis AG), Velcade (Millennium Inc.) and Iressa (AstraZeneca plc) have reached the market.

The last time the annual convention was in Boston, researchers still were working to complete the Human Genome Project, a 13-year endeavor to identify all the genes in human DNA and to determine sequences of about 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA. That project was finished in 2003, though analysis of that data is expected to continue for years.

In addition to human therapeutics, other areas of biotech have increased dramatically since 2000. At that time, biotech crop acres totaled about 75 million. That number jumped to 135 million, as of last year.

In 2000, annual research and development expenditures for biotech totaled about $14 billion. The most recent total, from 2005, showed that annual R&D costs increased to nearly $20 billion. Biotech reported annual revenues of $24 billion in 2000, and that figure "more than doubled by 2005" to nearly $50 billion, Greenwood said.

Innovation, Investment And Issues

Even with its successes and growth over the years, the industry still has hurdles to overcome to maintain that pace of discovery and business development. Coming into this year's meeting, Congress remains locked in debate over a bill that would reauthorize PDUFA and the issue of follow-on biogenerics has biotech executives and investors sweating it out. (See story this issue.)

Those concerns, along with patent reform legislation, bills limiting funding for embryonic stem cell research and criticism over drug pricing affect both the industry's sustainability and innovation. Otherwise, "the promise of biotech [to cure disease] will be lost," Greenwood said. "We're just beginning to turn the corner on cancer," but there are other diseases, such as Parkinson's, that still are in the early stages.

That need for innovation will be highlighted today in a keynote session featuring Michael J. Fox, who is expected to address the need to speed up the translation of investments in research and discovery into actual therapeutic advances for patients.

Other speakers during the conference include Queen Noor of Jordan and U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, and Greenwood himself is expected to moderate a keynote session Wednesday to discuss the future of biotech over the next 10 to 20 years.

At this year's conference, the exhibit floor, always a hallmark of the annual meeting, will take up about 200,000 square feet, with just under 2,000 exhibiting companies. BIO 2007 also is expected to host a record number of one-on-one partnering meetings during the convention; more than 11,000 are anticipated. About 275 company presentations are scheduled this year, and the number of sessions offered will total more than 200. Sessions will run the gamut of issues, from scientific discovery to investment to bioethics, with a focus on taking a global view of the industry, with international seminars spotlighting developments from more than 30 countries and regions worldwide.

Boston: A 'Super Cluster'

This year's theme is "New Ideas, Bold Ventures, Global Benefits," a perspective that will be symbolized by a large globe, an estimated 20 feet to 25 feet in diameter, at the entrance of the conference center to highlight biotech efforts in areas around the world. "Frequently at the annual meetings, the host cities are yearning to be recognized as major biotech hubs," Greenwood told BioWorld Today. But this conference will take a much broader view, since "Boston doesn't really have anything to prove."

The Boston area, which is home to biotech stalwarts such as Genzyme and Biogen Idec and vies with San Francisco as the biotech capital of the world, is one of the top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, according to the 2007 PricewaterhouseCoopers Massachusetts Life Sciences Cluster Survey.

Deemed a "super cluster," the Boston area, including Cambridge and outlying Waltham, is home to the majority of the state's 600 biotech companies. Statewide, Massachusetts ranks second behind California in terms of venture capital financing, though the state's VC investments in life sciences during 2006 increased 43 percent to $1.1 billion, according to data from PWC's MoneyTree report. And Massachusetts' top 25 publicly traded life sciences companies, which generated more than $23 billion in net revenues in 2006, came close to doubling their annual revenues in the space of four years.

With biotech being such big business in Boston, there's really only one downside to having the city host the annual BIO meeting: protestors. They were scant during last year's conference in Chicago, but had turned out in full force in 2000, protesting everything from cloning to genetically modified corn. Undoubtedly, protestors will be back in 2007.

"The one thing that hasn't changed" since BIO first came to Boston in 2000 "is that there are still people who don't get it," Greenwood said. But, he added, with a conference full of "brilliant people working on how to clean the environment and make life-enhancing [products] available to the poorest people in the world," any protestors will be "just background noise to all of that."

The conference continues through Wednesday.