I attended the Biocom Open House in San Diego last Thursday, and had a great time. The theme was “Southern California Life Science Industry is Larger than Life,” complete with oversized nametags and summer “accessories” and food. I saw some familiar faces and met some new as well. I met someone from Pacira Pharmaceuticals, formerly Skye Pharma, who are actively developing and marketing their group of local anasthetic products. I met Stephen Chang, CSO of Stemgent, a relatively new company in San Diego developing products for stem cell research, an exciting new area. From a marketing standpoint, their website is impressive and “web 2.0,” meaning that it has interactive features such as a forum and a wiki.
I was interested to hear about Avitacor, which runs clinical trials in Mexico, from their co-founder Ciro Garcia. I’m betting this is something we’ll hear a lot more about in the future. I also learned of the UCSD $200K Entrepreneurship Competition from Dany Kitishian, UCSD student and CEO. He was looking to raise funds for the competition’s top award for a startup business plan, which has been increased from $50K to $200K. I also ran into Leo Lee of Pfizer, also the Membership & Communications Chairperson for the San Diego Biotech Discussion Group. They are having a meeting this week, and he indicated that they usually have around 200 in attendance.
Joe Panetta, CEO of Biocom, gave a short speech in which he highlighted the fact that Biocom has a new website, complete with a new Career Center via a partnership with BioSpace. Biocom put on a great event with what I estimate to be about 200 people in attendance. The food was great and I had a good time socializing and getting up to speed on San Diego Biotech.