With more than 850 biotechnology companies, the Bay Area is the oldest, largest and most productive life sciences cluster in the world, employing more than 125,000 people in the region. For more than 30 years, this region has led the world in researching and delivering new cures and treatments for debilitating diseases including cancer, Multiple … Continue reading “The Early Stage Innovation Crisis”
Author: Gail Maderis
Gail Maderis is President & CEO of BayBio, the industry organization representing and supporting Northern California’s life science community. As a former biotech CEO, Ms. Maderis brings deep experience and commitment to supporting the industry through enterprise development, peer-to-peer experience sharing, advocacy and support of education and workforce development. From 2003 to 2009, Ms. Maderis served as President and CEO of Five Prime Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held protein discovery and development company. At FivePrime, she successfully funded the company’s rapid growth through substantial private equity financings and corporate partnerships and took the company’s first novel cancer therapeutic from discovery into clinical trials. Prior to FivePrime, Ms. Maderis held senior executive positions at Genzyme Corporation, including founder and president of Genzyme Molecular Oncology (GZMO). Ms. Maderis practiced management and strategy consulting with Bain & Co. She serves on the boards of BayBio, the Mayor’s Biotech Advisory Council of San Francisco and the HBS Healthcare Initiative. She received a BS in business from the UC Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
It Takes Grassroots Effort to Support Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship has fueled economic growth and innovation throughout the Bay Area’s history. We applaud President Barack Obama’s call to action and the White House Startup America program to support entrepreneurs. In California’s innovation economy we have seen first hand that entrepreneurship is key to driving job creation and economic development. The Federal bureaucracy can raise … Continue reading “It Takes Grassroots Effort to Support Entrepreneurs”
Northern California’s Top 5 Biotech Innovation News Stories
The year that was 2010 was another year on the rollercoaster. We had our ups and our downs. But throughout, we continued to be at the forefront of innovation. From mature companies to emerging technologies, 2010 was an exciting year. Here are BayBio’s top five stories for 2010. 1. Amgen secures approval for two new … Continue reading “Northern California’s Top 5 Biotech Innovation News Stories”
Prop. 24 Will Hurt California Businesses, Big and Small
Proposition 24, on the November ballot, is all about jobs. Prop. 24 will cost us as many as 322,000 jobs a year…next year, and for some years to come. Prop. 24 will cost us as much as $1.8 billion a year in revenues to the state…next year, and for some years to come. Those numbers … Continue reading “Prop. 24 Will Hurt California Businesses, Big and Small”
How Bay Area Biotech Stacks Up With the Rest of the World
Recently, Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria told an audience of biotechnology executives that America’s foothold as the preeminent technology innovator may be slipping. “Bill Gates is the Britney Spears of China,” Zakaria said. “But in the U.S., Britney Spears is still Britney Spears.” The reverence our rivals place on science and math is measured appropriately in … Continue reading “How Bay Area Biotech Stacks Up With the Rest of the World”
Three Ways to Create a More Sustainable Future for Biotechnology
1.Encourage tax incentives and policies that would create more investment in biotech. We should create a tax holiday to allow repatriation of offshore profits that are used to fund R&D in small companies. There are huge profits that are locked up overseas and will never come back unless we provide a means for them to … Continue reading “Three Ways to Create a More Sustainable Future for Biotechnology”