National Thought Leaders Come to Oregon
By Linda Barney and Kate McPherron 

Oregon’s largest gathering of the regional and national biotechnology and life-science community convenes on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011 for the Oregon Bioscience Association’s annual conference. Several well-known, national thought leaders join other stellar presenters in this year’s important discussion. We asked those speakers about their presentations and what attendees will learn.

Economic Development Efforts in Oregon – Growth for Biotechnology

The Oregon Bioscience Association annual conference opens with a coffee session featuring Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle  talking about economic development. “Our strategy includes a comprehensive approach to economic development— firm based, place based, and people based,” states Doyle.  

Doyle has been talking with Oregon’s congressional delegation, other government officials and businesses about how to expand biotechnology, attract companies, grow talent through training and perhaps even develop a biotechnology business incubator. Doyle states, “The Oregon Business Technology Center (OTBC) was developed as a technology and software business incubator and I don’t see why something similar could not be developed for biotechnology. We have tremendous support for biotechnology based on the groups that are already here. The potential for long-term growth in the biotech industry is a tremendous opportunity for everyone—we have land, research and development as well as a highly trained workforce with experience in manufacturing, quality assurance and design. But we can’t do it alone; we need help from the biotech industry in working on ideas for business expansion.” Come to this session to hear more and give Mayor Doyle additional ideas and input on how to grow and expand the biotechnology industry in Oregon.

Challenges and Opportunities in Physician-Industry Collaborations

"Research and innovation are not the same: innovation is extremely hard and involves multiple nuanced and granular activities," says Dr. Thomas Stossel , American Cancer Society professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a clinical hematologist and cell biology research pioneer, who is currently a senior physician in the Hematology Division and head of the Translational Medicine Unit at the Center for Medical Innovation at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an industry collaborations expert. "Unfortunately administrators, politicians, pundits and critics throw these terms around as vague abstractions."  

In his morning keynote, Dr. Stossel will explore how simple lack of precision like this can lead to misunderstanding and contribute to the lack of understanding of industry collaboration, which has historically proved highly beneficial to a great number of patients. He will discuss how tendentious slogans such as "bias" and "conflict of interest" have persisted and taken a disproportionate amount of the airwave. The talk will also explore how proposed COI regulations may affect patients, research and innovation, start-ups based on medical research, and medical education itself.

With his decades of work in basic research, attempting to commercialize discoveries and consulting for industry, Dr. Stossel has witnessed firsthand the effects of numerous physician-industry collaborations. "The 'best practice' I know is simply obstinate persistence and taking as many shots on goal as possible.”

The Future of Personalized Medicine

Personalized medicine involves testing an individual’s DNA to obtain a genetic profile that can indicate susceptibility to certain diseases before they occur, allowing the physician and patient to establish a plan for monitoring and prevention. Genetic information can also help physicians select drugs or treatments that minimize harmful side effects or ensure a more successful outcome.

Personalized medicine legislation, Section 3113, sponsored by Oregon’s Senator Ron Wyden, establishes a demonstration project which Wyden says “will give more Americans access to innovative molecular diagnostic tests designed to improve treatment outcomes for life-threatening diseases such as cancer and heart disease.” This legislation will also create a demonstration project under which labs can bill Medicare directly rather than being required to wait for billing.

This informative session will explore how personalized medicine will impact the practice of medicine as well as what changes are expected in diagnostic intelligence as a result. Moderated by Joe Hammang , MD, senior director, Worldwide Science Policy, Pfizer Corp, this interactive dialogue will address hot topics for researchers as well as companies looking to commercialize new diagnostic therapeutic tests and analytical tools.

Semiconductor Sequencing – The Future of Gene Sequencing Delivered

Semiconductor technology has transformed every industry it has touched from computing to photography to music. Brian McKelligon ,who directs the global commercial efforts of the Ion Torrent Division of Life Technologies (LIFE), describes how the semiconductor is now transforming life science research. The Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine is a DNA sequencer powered by an innovative semiconductor chip. Ion Torrent technology uses a massively parallel array of proprietary semiconductor sensors to perform direct, real-time measurement of the hydrogen ions produced during DNA replication.

So why is this important? This technology provides scalability, simplicity and speed. It allows researchers to run DNA sequencing in hours, not days or weeks—all at a much lower cost. The technology speeds up the time it takes to decipher a person’s genetic code to provide a personalized report of health risks and potential therapies. Come to this session to hear about the Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine and to find out how it might be applied to biotechnical research in Oregon.

Linda Barney is the founder and owner of Barney and Associates , a technical / marketing writing, training and web design firm in Beaverton, Oregon that provides writing and web content for the high tech, government, biotechnology, medical, sustainability and scientific communities. Linda writes articles for the Software Association of Oregon, the Oregon Bioscience Association, the Clean Technology Alliance, and the Supercomputing Conference. Contact Linda at linda@barneyassoc.com .

Kate McPherron provides strategic communications consulting to organizations in bioscience, energy efficiency, engineering and high tech. Kate’s history includes running successful low-budget, tight-deadline product launches and company introductions; ongoing product/PR management; as well as writing and coordinating documentation projects for large, regulated companies. Key to Kate’s work is unearthing, defending and persuading a viewpoint, often communicating technical information to a less-savvy audience. Contact Kate at kmcpherron@gmail.com .