September 22, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
BOSTON – From Sept. 25 to Sept. 28, thousands of people will descend on Boston for Biotech Week Boston. Many of them will attend the dozens of panels and speeches that are part of BioProcess International Conference and Exhibition.
Among those will be Charles Sardonini, director of process engineering and development at Sanofi . Sardonini has been attending the event for years and over the past seven years has taken on a greater advisory role to conference organizers. BioProcessing International (BPI) is billed as the largest exhibition devoted to biomanufacturing. During the three-day conference at the Hynes Convention Center, more than 225 case studies and data presentations will be shared.
“It’s a comprehensive look into the state of the bioprocessing industry,” Sardonini, who has an expertise in the upstream of the manufacturing process, told BioSpace in an exclusive interview.
Sardonini will have primary roles at this year’s conference, but each one will be short-lived. On Sept. 26, Sardonini will introduce the conference’s keynote speaker, Dr. Flemming Ornskov, chief executive officer of Shire . Ornskov is scheduled to give an address called “A Vision for Rare Disease: How We Can Champion Underserved Patients.”
Rare diseases typically include the largest under-served patient populations, given the small number of patients. However, according to BPI’s website, Ornskov will share his opinion on how “the biopharma industry must continue to innovate and embrace new technologies to drive advances that result in faster diagnosis, better access and more effective treatments.”
“I’m just introducing the keynote. I usually talk to them right before I go out there to find out how they want me to introduce them,” Sardonini quipped.
Ornskov and Shire are coming into BPI after receiving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Fast Track Designation for its chronic lung disease treatment, SHP607. The experimental treatment is currently in Phase II clinical development. It is a recombinant human version of the naturally occurring protein complex of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and its most abundant binding protein, IGF binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3). IGF-1 plays an important role in the development of the fetus in the uterus.
In August, Shire also announced a collaboration with Microhealth to support a free and secure care monitoring tool for hemophilia A and B patients with inhibitors and their care teams.
The other keynote address will be presented by Dr. James Collins of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On Sept. 27, Collins will present “Synthetic Biology: Biomedical Applications Come of Age.” According to the conference website, Collins will “highlight recent efforts to create synthetic gene networks and programmable cells, and discuss a variety of synthetic biology applications in biotechnology and biomedicine.”
The BPI conference is part of Biotech Week Boston. For those attending BPI, particularly first-time attendees, Sardonini suggested looking at the schedules of the different technical talks that are of interest and map out a plan of action. Sessions include talks like “A Technology Roadmapping Process to Transform the Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry,” which is being presented by Sardonini’s Sanofi colleague Udayanath Aich.
“There are a lot of great sessions scheduled and they’re all within close proximity of each other. That way you can end up bouncing from talk to talk,” Sardonini said.
This year event goers will be able to manage their conference schedules with the Biotech Week Boston App. The app allows conference attendees to view the attendee list, send private messages and schedule meetings before, during and after the event. Sardonini said he said he prefers having hard copies of his personal agenda, but plans to give the new app a try during the conference.
