We’re just over a week away from bringing the Big Apple biotech community together for a taste of what it takes to make it here—and what big stories are changing the face of biomedical research in and around Manhattan.
Tickets are going fast, but there are still seats available for our March 12 bash at the Alexandria Center for Life Science on East 29th Street. We’ve got a top lineup of scientific entrepreneurs, investors, and executives who are each putting their stamp on the local biotech scene in a different way.
First there’s Sam Waksal, the former ImClone Systems CEO who’s now reportedly positioning his latest venture, Kadmon—based in the same building as his old one—for an IPO. Waksal has lived and breathed New York biotech for years, and will kick off the festivities with some overview thoughts for the city’s life sciences scene.
First up is the New York Genome Center, a venture that’s indicative of the sea change in New York’s attitude towards biotech compared to a few decades ago. As Acorda Therapeutics CEO Ron Cohen told the crowd at our event last year, there wasn’t a culture of collaboration in New York in the past. People wanted to protect their turf. The NYGC turns that concept on its head—12 institutions had to come together to create it. CEO Robert Darnell will tell us the story behind the NYGC, and what it aims to do with its unique opportunity.
Next is the Accelerator Corp., the biotech startup machine out of Seattle that chose last year to plant a flag in New York—not the more prolific hubs like San Francisco and Boston—and support local life sciences entrepreneurship. It’s a plan that had been in the making for a long time, and CEO Thong Le and investor and board member Misti Ushio will explain what brought Accelerator here, and what it’s looking for.
Then there’s Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:REGN]]), which navigated through some early ups and downs in the late 90s and early 2000s to become perhaps New York’s most prolific biotech. George Yancopoulos, a one-time Columbia University professor who grew up in Queens, has been there from the beginning—and over the course of nearly two decades to become one of the top R&D chiefs in the business. Yancopoulos will share how Regeneron persevered to become the biotech giant it is today.
You can get your tickets here. See you all next week in Manhattan.
