I still have one more feature story I hope to bang out this afternoon, but the Xconomy team will soon be heading over to Seattle Biomedical Research Institute tonight for our big event on the 20-year outlook for the Northwest’s life sciences cluster.
This sold-out event will bring together some of the world’s leading life sciences visionaries, who have rarely, if ever, appeared on the same stage. The highlight will be a panel discussion, moderated by Carl Weissman of Accelerator and OVP Venture Partners, that will include Steve Gillis of Arch Venture Partners; Ben Shapiro, former executive vice president of worldwide basic research at Merck; and Stephen Friend, the co-founder of Rosetta Inpharmatics, and now co-founder and CEO of Sage Bionetworks. We will then feature short presentations from some of the potentially transformative life sciences startups in the region, before the networking portion of the evening.
Thanks to the many people who have helped make this happen. That includes our event sponsors: Fenwick & West, Cooley Godward Kronish, and Christensen O’ Connor Johnson Kindness. We also want to thank our underwriters—Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Fenwick & West, Cooley Godward Kronish, and the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as well as our venture members, Arch Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners. Thanks also to SBRI for serving as the event host, and to the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association for serving as our event partner. Lastly, we have to give a shout out to all the Xconomy Seattle partners: The Alliance of Angels, Northwest Entrepreneurs Network, Technology Alliance, the WBBA, and the Washington Technology Industry Association.
We expect this event to be a highly interactive conversation, so come ready to fire away with some questions.