At the BIO International Convention in San Diego, attendees marked the 50th anniversary of original biotech Genentech, reflecting on the immense challenges facing companies as China becomes a powerhouse innovator.
Last Wednesday, cheers erupted across the soaring halls of the San Diego Convention Center. The Scotland versus Brazil match of the FIFA World Cup had just ended in a three-nil win for the latter.
While much of the world is captivated by the high-profile soccer tournament, Insilico CEO Alex Zhavoronkov was unimpressed.
“Sorry, just 22 guys on the field kicking a ball,” he told BioSpace, rolling his eyes. “Can you imagine a job being a football player? For us, we’re saving lives. What are they doing? Entertaining. Grown men making millions of dollars. This is much more important.”
Indeed, the BIO International Convention is biotech’s biggest singular party, and this year, a thread of optimism that began five months earlier and 500 miles north in San Francisco was further strengthened. Throughout the week, attendees met to make potential deals and network on the 50th anniversary of the industry’s beginning.
“There’s been a tremendous amount of positive energy about how far we’ve come,” Kyverna Therapeutics CEO Warner Biddle told BioSpace on the sidelines of the conference. “The theme of the meeting, the 50 years of biotech, and driving how much progress we’ve made over the past 50 years, is clearly ringing through.”
BIO CEO John Crowley reflected on the original biotech Genentech, in which a 29-year-old venture capitalist and a 34-year-old scientist got together to see if their combined ideas could create a company to make medicines and save lives.
“[This is] an industry that’s born of an entrepreneurial spirit, one that’s uniquely American-born and still American-led,” Crowley said during in an address to media on Tuesday.
Deals and other signs of recovery
The 50-year anniversary of Genentech’s launch was certainly driving some excitement. But Sofinnova Investments Executive Partner Maha Radhakrishnan said the overall markets are buoying sentiment. There have been about 18 IPOs in the sector so far this year, plus dozens of high-profile M&A deals, according to Radhakrishnan.
Eli Lilly, for instance, has spent about $30 billion, she noted. Multiple deals were announced just last week during the conference, a trend that typically happens at the industry’s biggest gathering, the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that kicks off the year.
“This is a great push for innovation. It’s a great push for entrepreneurs to be able to say, listen, if you pursue good science, there’s always a way out,” Radhakrishnan said.
Maggie O’Toole, CEO of Cambridge, Massachusetts–based biotech startup accelerator LabCentral, said that BIO is a much better environment than JPM for smaller companies like the ones she works with. O’Toole said that LabCentral’s companies have seen an influx of international interest lately. The accelerator signed a partnership with HKSTP, a similar collective of biotech startups based in Hong Kong, to start the conference.
“The energy is just really strong, which is nice,” O’Toole said of BIO 2026, her first attendance outside of Boston.
Rachel Lane, senior vice president of business development and operations at AI drug discovery biotech Xaira Therapeutics, credited BIO with fostering deeper, more personal conversations.
“I always love BIO, just from walking through the corridors and bumping into people that you haven’t seen for a long time,” she said. “I love that aspect, and just kind of the more organic conversations you can have.”
In fact, Lane had just stepped off a panel on dealmaking with Anamaria Sudarov, a former New York colleague and now managing director of the Healthcare Investment Banking division of Wells Fargo.
“I can ask her more candid questions here one-on-one as we’re talking casually than I could on an organized Zoom,” Lane said. “You get a lot of competitive intelligence and insights and different ways of thinking that impact ultimately the way that I’m thinking about the world.”
The China element
Despite the positivity, Biddle said that reflecting on the achievements of biotech isn’t enough. He noticed a “call to action,” as the industry faces more international pressures than ever. The rise of China innovation was a topic on nearly every panel—much to the dismay of Insilico’s Zhavoronkov.
“I even stood up and said, ‘Hey, guys, can we please talk about the main topic of this panel?’ Because, like, pipeline explorations, you are talking about China most of the time,” Zhavoronkov said in a BioSpace interview on the bustling exhibition floor of the conference.
But the threat that China will overtake the U.S. is not one that biopharma can ignore, Crowley pointed out in his plenary opening speech.
“We need to continue to nurture and advance an ecosystem where science entrepreneurs and technology visionaries can combine with those who fund private capital into promising biotech ventures. This is the heart and soul of biotechnology,” he said.
“At its core, what we seek is a renewal and a renaissance of that same spirit, that entrepreneurial spirit that gave rise to biotechnology 50 years ago,” Crowley continued. “This is how we will outcompete China and ensure that cures and treatments aren’t treated as a tool in a geopolitical battle. This is how we will meet this new moment and author the next great chapter of biotechnology.”
Later, as this reporter left the exhibition hall, two noise makers emblazoned with Scotland’s team logo were shoved in the trash. With the game over, it was time to turn back to what’s really important.
