In The Know – June 2018 As you read my June newsletter, I’m jetting my way to Boston to help showcase some of the state’s emerging and most promising bioscience firms. For the second consecutive year, NMBio is a proud to have organized and recruited nine partners to exhibit and be part of the New Mexico Pavilio at the BIO International Convention, June 4-7 in Boston. This meeting, which will attract more than 16,000 attendees from 74 countries, will mark the world’s largest bioscience trade association’s 25th anniversary. To show you what a small world this is, Richard Gill and I co-sponsored the first BIO conference that took place in Philadelphia in 1996. At the time Richard represented BTG International, Inc. (headquartered in Philadelphia) and was serving as SVP and GM; I was representing PECO Energy, the state’s largest public utility, and was serving as its Director of Economic and Business Development. Today, we both enjoy living in Santa Fe and serving as ambassadors and cheerleaders for NM’s bioscience community. Richard serves on several boards at the national and local levels, including Launchpad Venture Group and the world reknown Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute I had the opportunity to attend 12 consecutive BIO conferences between the kickoff meeting and the 2005 meeting in Philadelphia, when I cut the ribbon to open the 2005 conference with former PA Congressman James Greenwood, the then incoming and current President and CEO of BIO as well as with the governors from PA, DE and NJ’s Secretary of Commerce. During this time period, greater Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania experienced tremendous growth in the life sciences thanks to strong financial and political support from three successive governors and the legislative leadership from both political parties. Obviously, I’d love to see NM follow the same game plan and achieve similar success with the assistance of the state’s major research institutions and centers of tech transfer, the economic development organizations, the expanding network of incubators and accelerators, the recently created public/private Bioscience Authority and, of course, NMBio – the statewide advocate for the bioscience industry and the trade association that truly provides strategic connections to its member firms. I’ll also note that the governors and their secretaries of commerce that I worked with in PA also contributed their time. They saw the industry’s growth potential. They came to several of the BIO conferences to personally promote the state and its resources, network with industry executives, and do their best to woo firms as well as investors. They weren’t alone. Many conferences would draw at least five governors as well as big city mayors — all focused on courting life science companies. Besides NMBio, companies, organizations and institutions collaborating in the pavilion include Agilvax, Pebble Labs, Vista Therapeutics, the Sandoval Economic Alliance, New Mexico Tech, the New Mexico Economic Development Department, Versatile MED Analytics, Sandia Biotech and MagPi Innovations. These entities are based in Las Cruces greater Albuquerque, Los Alamos, Santa Fe and Socorro. In other words, all of the state’s emerging bioscience clusters will be represented at BIO. In addition to these firms other NM companies and organizations will have representatives attending the conference. Jovan Hauser will represent STC-UNM and Jacob McDonald will be marketing Lovelace Biomedical. We’ll also be distributing marketing materials for firms and organizations that couldn’t join us, including the Santa Fe Business Incubator, the Arrowhead Center, the New Mexico Partnership, and the New Mexico Economic Development Department. New York-based AMRI Global, which is expanding and adding scores of jobs at its major contract manufacturing and research facilities in Albuquerque, also has its own exhibit booth at the show.
| 
Agilvax, Inc., a biotechnology company that develops targeted cancer immunotherapies and vaccines, recently announced that it is now a resident company at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, 
To Top
