State rolls out new pavilion to make connections at BIO confab in Chicago

More than 50 Wisconsin biotech companies and research facilities, plus 150 people from the Badger State, are expected to attend BIO International 2013 in Chicago this week.

A state biotech source says Gov. Scott Walker may also stop by, though his office declined to confirm a visit.

BioForward, the state’s Madison-based biotech trade group, is taking a lead role this year after the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. headed the state delegation to last year’s convention in Boston. WEDC is still involved in a supporting role this year, including spending $169,340 on a reusable pavilion to be used at this week’s event and for future events to tout the state’s business successes.

Tom Thieding, WEDC communications manager, said the pavilion will have special panels for BIO. He stressed that the structure was built so it can be used for other trade shows to promote Wisconsin businesses.

“As WEDC looked at its ongoing efforts to promote the state, we realized there was significant long-term savings in investing in a reusable vendor display that could be moved from site to site, rather than build a new display each time,” he said.

Thieding said BIO is WEDC’s “opportunity to launch this new display that will put the state’s biosciences industry strength into a larger Wisconsin business climate context.

“The investment by WEDC in this adaptable tradeshow property will also allow WEDC to more effectively tell the Wisconsin story across a wide range of industry-specific events.”

Lisa Johnson, vice president of entrepreneurship and innovation at WEDC, said BIO is a good forum for Wisconsin “to brag about our strengths.”

“The convention provides business partnering that you rarely can achieve at any other conference. It is also a matching event for young startups — emerging growth companies to interact with the larger life science companies.”

According to the 2012 Battelle/BIO State Bioscience Industry Development report, Wisconsin has one of the nation’s healthiest, fastest growing bioscience sectors over the last several years. The report showed Wisconsin’s biosciences industry’s 1,366 businesses employed nearly 31,000 people in 2010, with annual average wages ranging from $54,822 in agricultural feedstock and chemicals, to $79,409 in the medical devices and equipment sector.

Brian Renk, who heads BioForward, said his group raised money so many biotech start-ups could attend BIO and take advantage of the opportunities.

He said 20 Wisconsin firms went to the Boston BIO last year, and that number could triple this year with well over 150 people from the Badger State attending.

“For a southern Wisconsin company, it’s a short drive,” he said. “We’ve also done a lot of promotion and definitely seen an uptick of interest.”

Renk, who attended his first BIO in Philadelphia when he was working for WARF, said “if anyone is going to be there to help grow a biotech business, they will be in Chicago. This is the largest conference of its kind in the world.”

He said companies set up multiple meetings.

“This is a lot better than knocking off one every other week and traveling all over the country or world to meet these company’s representatives,” he said.

Renk said Walker may attend a reception at the pavilion on Tuesday.

In addition, Renk said U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wisconsin also has made plans to visit the pavilion. And Reed Hall, the CEO of WEDC, will be there for the conference.

Laura Strong, president of Quintessence, said this will be her fifth or sixth BIO conference.

“BIO is one of the largest networking biotech events anywhere. And you get to interact with a whole host of people you’d have to go to the coasts or abroad to see,” she said.

Strong, whose company has three employees at this point, called the meeting process something like Match.com or speed dating.

“There’s a computerized partnering forum where you enter your information and you also can look for other companies have a profile that you’re interested in and request a meeting.

“Once they accept, the system sets up a session. I’m looking for companies that have an interest in filling their drug pipeline with new cancer therapies, which is what Quintessence is working on.”

Zack Robbins, associate director of development for the Morgridge Institute for Research (the private half of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on the UW-Madison campus) said he will do 60 or 70 meetings during the three-day conference.

“I feel bad that I’m missing some of the interesting scientific session, but the reason I’m going is to spread the word about the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery,” he said.

“A big part of my role is to build valuable relationships and connections with individuals and companies for the institutes, which are a relatively young biomed research facility,” he said.

“Outside of the Madison area, we don’t have the name recognition of a Salk Institute (in San Diego) or a Broad Institute (in Cambridge, Mass.), but we do have world-class research going on here with people like Jamie Thomson in regenerative biology or Rock Mackie and his medical device group.

“The main purpose for the meetings and the pavilion is to get the word out that the science here in Wisconsin is as good, if not better, than what people hear about on the coasts.”

— By Brian E. Clark

For WisBusiness.com