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From left to right, Comprehensive Cell Solutions Chief Business Officer, Maryland Tech Council CEO Kelly Schulz and Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Company Executive Managing Director discuss Delaware's space in attracting life science business and talent. | DBT PHOTO BY KATIE TABELING[/caption]
NEWARK — The second annual Delaware DNA conference hosted by the Delaware BioScience Association drew around 320 people seeking to gain perspective on the successes and challenges in the state’s pharmaceutical industry.
The conference on May 9 at the University of Delaware's Clayton Hall featured top leaders from Delaware’s pharmaceutical industry including Inctye, the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), AstraZeneca and other companies and organizations, building on last year’s foundation of discussing trends in workforce and innovation.
“As we look to the future, I believe that life sciences will only become a more important part of our economy,” Gov. John Carney said in his welcome address. “Sometime, several years from now, this whole auditorium will be filled with people representing those companies in that industry.”
The governor noted that biopharmaceuticals is quite literally knitted in Delaware’s DNA, building off the legacy from DuPont to establish the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, a partnership between industry, government and academia to advance biotechnology. Years down the line, the University of Delaware’s STAR Campus became home to NIIMBL where the state is now accelerating research in manufacturing.
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Gov. John Carney talks about his administration's efforts to boost the life science sector, including the graduated lab space program, during Delaware's DNA conference. | DBT PHOTO BY KATIE TABELING[/caption]
Still, Delaware has to compete on an international stage. Carney and a delegation of Delaware officials and business leaders spent a week in Ireland recently. Their trip included a tour of the AstraZenca production facility that focuses on treatments for rare diseases. The Newark site in the First State competed for that production line and lost.
“Among the things we heard on that visit was the strong collaboration across government, the private sector and higher education in Ireland was really quite amazing,” the governor said. “That trip really drove home the importance of workforce development in the economy we have now. We really need young people prepared for specific production jobs.”
Delaware’s life sciences sector employs around 11,000 people with a collective payroll of at least $230 million. It also generates $2 billion in gross domestic product.
The conference brought people together from all over the region to hear panel discussions on technology breakthroughs, building a workforce, capital funding, politics, and leveraging federal funds. There was also a keynote chat with Olivier Leclerc, a senior partner of McKinsey & Company who works with pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical-products clients.
Throughout the day, smaller companies were able to make their pitch to potential investors at a showcase - and vice versa. Companies like CorriXR, Prelude Therapeutics, Biocurie, Uvax Bio and more used a small theater to talk about the innovations their companies were making while investors like First Fund, Epidarex Capital, BioAdvance and UD Launch Fund talked about what strikes the interest of their fund.
Workforce and AI talk
This year, many experts considered innovations in precision medicine, fueled by Delaware’s inclusion in the Tech Hub designation with the Philadelphia region, as well as the need to understand and process large amounts of data. On that front, many executives in the boardroom are discussing how artificial intelligence can prove to be a game changer.
“I’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and when I started, validating manufacturing processes was done on paper. Imagine the data we had to collect, whether it’s drug testing, development and release,” AstraZeneca Global Operations Head of Lean Digital Katherine Wallace said. “Digitization sounds easy, but at the same time, you have to make sure the right safeguards are in place. Technology is enabling us to get better insights to the data, much faster. I think it’s enabling us to be better than we were before.”
While AI could provide efficiencies in the research and development stage, for IQVIA Chief Digital and Marketing Officer Andrew Ploszay, the challenge is balancing that efficiency with quality.
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Roughly 350 people from small and large companies from the state and around the region came to netwotk and listen to experts talk about the future for the Life Sciences sector. | DBT PHOTO BY KATIE TABELING[/caption]
IQVIA provides analytics, technology solutions and clinical research to life science firms.
“You have to put yourself in the shoes of the senior leaders who are asking how to generate speed if the window for commercialization is getting exceedingly smaller? How do I find increasingly smaller footprint data? AI will help you, but we’re still in that uncomfortable stage where we’re fumbling over it,” Ploszay said.
Meanwhile, Aisling Capital Founder and Senior Advisor Dennis Purcell took a little more cautious look at AI overall, noting the historic hype around prescription drugs in the 1980s.
“Lots of good drugs did come out of it, but there was fewer and fewer that eventually came out of the market. There was a lot of hype around it, and right now, the benefits of AI are not really accurate yet for clinical development. Though it probably will,” Purcell said.
He added that in the last three years there has been $330 billion invested in 26,000 AI start-ups.
When it came to building an ecosystem, panelists like Jay Biggins, executive director of site selection consultant Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Company and Maryland Tech Council CEO Kelly Schulz pointed out that thinking of Delaware as a part of a group rather than an island can help move the needle.
“The only things that really matter as a state or jurisdiction is the tax policy and having sites ready. We all know how quickly decisions are made for site selection, and particularly for life sciences companies, it can be uncertain” Biggins said. “Access to talent is also mission critical. Real estate costs are always a big number, but if you can’t find the talent, you can’t afford it. So that means locations like Delaware must demonstrate the most sustainable and durable commitment to workforce development, being keyed into what the industry needs.”
With Maryland sharing a border with the first state, Schulz, who used to serve as Maryland Commerce Secretary under Gov. Larry Hogan, said that many Delaware companies have been borrowing workers that live in Maryland, and vice-versa for institutes like Johns Hopkins.
“Not everywhere can be like the Interstate 270 corridor, but what parts of your state can contribute to the ecosystem where there’s a feed of information and resources. If you have a STEM background from one of our universities, it’s going to be translated to a lot of differ types of tech that are moving forward,” she said. “I think it’s critical to satisfy the needs of growing businesses across the state as we move forward.”