BIO Goes South in 2009

John Henry, director of communications, of the Louisiana Gene Therapy Research Consortium, is ready to do business with his trusty sidekick on the BIO exhibit floor.

Floridians do some biotech business.

Georgians do a little biotech business.

The Louisiana pavilion is rocking and rolling.

This year the BIO International Convention attracted 43 states, and some of those states are preparing to go South in 2009. "The Southeast is the third largest region in the country for biotechnology," says Charles Craig, president of the Georgia Biomedical Partnership. And if the Governor's budget is any indication of the state's priorities biotechnology is high on the list. For example, in 2007 the Governor's budget included a $5 million expansion of the state's Biosciences Seed Fund, a $5 million expansion of the state's Life Sciences Facilities Fund, a $2.5 million expansion of the Georgia Research Alliance VentureLab program, a $200,000 for a new Georgia Research Alliance Patent Accelerator Fund, a $2 million to seed research on developing alternative fuels, and a $5 million for a marine bioscience building at Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.

But Georgia is not the only southern state ready for action, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina are quick to follow.

One state that's working hard to build biotechnology industry is Louisiana. Anne Jarrett the director of intellectual property for the Pennington Research Center, part of the Louisiana State University System talks proudly of the small biotech company, Esperance Pharmaceuticals that she helped launch. Esperance is developing a targeted anticancer drug that specifically targets cancer cells with hormone receptors. "It can even destroy metastatic cells long before any diagnostic system can detect them."

Esperance was brought to fruition despite hurricane Katrina, after which more than half of the Pennington faculty and staff housed evacuees, and Pennington housed the entire Tulane Medical School for one year.

What will happen to biotechnology in the South? Stay tuned, and join BIO and all your southeastern colleagues in Atlanta in 2009.