Singapore, Oct 19, 2007: Brisbane, the capital of Queensland will play host to some of the region’s biggest, best and most successful brains in biotechnology. More than 1200 delegates will attend the “AusBiotech 2007” Conference to be held from October 21 to 24.

 

In a year that has seen the share market boom and plummet, the Australian biotechnology sector has had some real successes. In recognition of the growing attraction of Australian biotechnology to overseas investors, some of Big Pharma’s key players will be at the conference “shopping” for deals. These include Dr Ted Koziol, VP Regional Business Development for Wyeth in the US; Dr Anand Tharmratnam, Head of Clinical Development (Asia Pacific) and CEO, S E Asia for Quintiles; Dr Judith Hill, VP Asia Pacific for Bristol Myers Squibb and Mr Warwick Bedwell, VP Global Head of Business Development Roche Pharmaceuticals and Mr Brian McNamee, CEO, CSL.

 

In addition, the conference has international plenary speakers such as Dr Carol Dahl, Head of Global Health Technologies for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Dr Graham Brazier, Vice President and Head of Business Development, Bristol Myers-Squibb.

 

Dr Anna Lavelle, CEO of the biotechnology industry umbrella group, AusBiotech said, “There are over 1300 delegates - and the seniority of the people that are attending this year is evidence that we have just under 400 people with the titles MD, VP, CEO, CFO as delegates to the conference. In addition there are about 400 international visitors and over 55 international speakers. It is now on the global radar for Big Pharma looking for partnering and investment opportunities and the top 12 Pharma are present along with the top 5 biotech companies. This year we have also improved the business matching service and over 1400 requests for meetings have been logged which has required us to build an additional 14 business meeting rooms with a total of 47 meeting rooms.

 

The Australian biotechnology sector has shown itself to extremely robust over the past year, with record growth in market capitalization, capital raised, new companies listed and the numbers of companies with products close to regulatory approval and the market shelves. As Australian companies mature, with their products traveling rapidly towards Phase 3 trials and beyond, there has been a 30 percent growth in market capitalization in 2006-07 over the previous year.