Maine’s presence small at biotech forum

BANGOR – Among the 1,325 exhibitors at what’s considered the most prominent international biotechnology conference starting Sunday in San Francisco will be a Maine trade group sharing a booth with its New Hampshire counterpart.

The state’s biotechnology sector does not dismiss the importance of the event, called BIO 2004 and sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, but it calls its small presence a testament to Maine’s limited resources.

Biotechnology is targeted as one of Maine’s new and emerging economies, accounting for 4,000 jobs and $432 million in revenue in 2002, yet private and public funds are limited to promote and grow this opportunity-rich sector.

It’s hard for Maine to compete with Florida, for example, when Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Florida, commits $500 million to convince San Diego’s prestigious Scripps Research Institute to build a campus in Palm Beach. At the trade show, Bush will be hosting two invitation-only events for 250 venture capitalists and presidents of international biotechnology companies.

“We don’t have the resources or the money like Florida does so we just have to outwork them,” Jack Cashman, commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development, said Wednesday.

No one from DECD, including Cashman, will be attending BIO 2004, he said.

More than 19,000 people from 60 countries will converge on the three-day conference in San Francisco including six governors, Nobel Prize winners, chief executive officers of pharmaceutical companies and venture capitalists.

Everyone there will be gunning for their share of the $40 billion-and-growing worldwide biotechnology industry.

At least 24 states will be promoting themselves as the place to do business. They’ve rented expansive blocks of exhibit space holding anywhere from seven to 48 or more booths featuring universities, city, county and state economic development groups, biotechnology companies and law firms.

The Atlantic Canada Bio-Industries Alliance, representing the provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, will have a display in the Canada block.

“It’s a prominent, premier conference and event to get everyone together,” said Cheryl Timberlake, executive director of the Biotechnology Association of Maine. BAM will share a booth with the New Hampshire Biotechnology Council and will promote the 80 biotechnology businesses located in Maine.

Representatives from biotech firms, including Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor and Maine Biotechnology Services Inc. in Portland, will be meeting customers and trying to secure new ones by visiting the booths instead of working in one.

Joseph Chandler, president of Maine Biotechnology Services, said he tried to get booth space at BIO 2004, but was put on a long waiting list. In the last couple of weeks, he’s received dozens of postcards from exhibitors telling him to visit their exhibits when at the show.

Chandler said he’s not surprised that Maine does not have a greater, more visible presence at the trade show. In past years, the conference primarily has been promoted as a research-based idea-sharing venue and not an economic development forum.

Biotechnology evolved in Maine because companies chose to be here, he said, rather than being asked here by state economic developers. He said the attraction is Maine’s proximity to Massachusetts, one of the top three biotechnology hubs nationwide, as well as Maine’s quality of life.

“Biotechnology in Maine developed on its own without state influence,” Chandler said. “[The state] does pay attention to it but I don’t think they pay attention to it in the way some states are paying attention to it.”

Last June, voters approved a $60 million bond and one-third of the money was shared by five biotechnology or biomedical institutions statewide, including Jackson Laboratory and Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove. Last week, Gov. John Baldacci and MDI Biological Lab attended a tradeshow geared more towards biomedical research that took place in San Francisco.

Cashman said because of the state’s limited funds, it wants to target biomedical and biotechnology companies that can compliment the ones that are here already.

Timberlake said that at BIO 2004 word-of-mouth could work as well as booth space.

“We think there are ways to market without that kind of expense,” Timberlake said. “We need to get people to say ‘Maine’ and ‘biotechnology’ in the same sentence. Hopefully we’ll come back with a few prominent leads.”