Name:
Boston and Bioprocessing: GEN Reports Live from the Second Day at BPI
Description:
Boston and Bioprocessing: GEN Reports Live from the Second Day at BPI
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T00H11M47S
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Upload Date:
2023-09-23T00:00:00.0000000
Transcript:
Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
KEVIN DAVIS: Hello, everyone. Let's beam back up to Boston and join our two editors doing heroic work covering BPI-- John Sterling, GEN's chief editor, and Julianna Lemieux, deputy editor in chief. She's the one in the red fleece. Looking forward to hearing what the highlights have been from everything we've-- since we last spoke 24 hours ago. Hi, John.
KEVIN DAVIS: Hi, Julianna. How's it going?
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Hi, Kevin.
JOHN STERLING: Wonderful.
KEVIN DAVIS: Good.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Do you hear this, John? I think a rock band just started in the background.
JOHN STERLING: Yeah.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Do you hear that music? So just in time for our video. We had some live music.
JOHN STERLING: Yeah.
KEVIN DAVIS: OK.
JOHN STERLING: It's a free musical accompaniment.
KEVIN DAVIS: Well, speaking of entertainment, what happened last night? Can you share any--
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Yeah, so--
JOHN STERLING: Julianna had a good time. Go ahead.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Oh, yeah. We were, I mean, we were here as a team checking out the companies on the expo floor that were talking about launching their products and what's going on and what's the news from the companies. And then we just walked around as a team and ended up at a party sponsored by Aldevron. We had some-- it was at a Mexican restaurant, so we had some Mexican food there. And yeah, just wandered around South Boston.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: It was great.
JOHN STERLING: Yeah. And I want to add to what you said, Kevin. Not only heroic. This has been marathon run. All we're missing are the cleats and everything else. We've seen a lot of companies here from morning till night, running up covering some of the sessions. In fact, I couldn't join them at that wonderful dinner last night because I did type up my news story for today, which I got done around
1: 00 this morning.
1: But I'm supposed to leave in about two hours, but I may hang around to go to this lawn party. Because Amtrak allows you at no charge to do that. It's one of the few companies where you don't have to pay to change something. So I don't think I want to miss this.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: It is similar to marathon running. I feel like I need one of those energy gel packs in my pocket, and it's hydrating constantly.
JOHN STERLING: I was humming Chariots of Fire to myself. [INAUDIBLE]
KEVIN DAVIS: Well, we had about three years, right, during the pandemic where we forgot what covering a live show was all about.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: We're out of shape.
KEVIN DAVIS: So, Julianna, I'm glad you're getting fit again. So what have been the highlights? What's really stood out so far in terms of the program, the talks, the keynotes, the sessions that you think really grabbed your attention?
JOHN STERLING: Yeah, I've sat through a couple till the end. One was interesting about-- should you still go stainless steel or single use? And the company made a great-- I didn't even think that that debate was still going on. But single use is still very widely used and continuing to be used. A little bit of continuation of yesterday as far as gene therapy. I noticed more cell therapy sessions today.
JOHN STERLING: Lots and lots of stuff on digitalization. And again, when you talk to companies, you get a little feeling that something is in the ether or whatever. A number of them, when they were talking about what they're doing, said the whole goal is to get products to market faster. About three companies said that without me prompting them. So that was a little bit different from yesterday.
JOHN STERLING: But yeah, still new products. One company, I think I got this right. Because I was stunned by-- for gene therapy, he said he can avoid the cell development cycle or really minimize it and go right to the final vector product. You folks will have to wait till we write about that in GEN because I want to be sure I got that right. And this guy's not pulling our leg.
KEVIN DAVIS: You mentioned digitalization. Do you mean AI? Is AI part of that conversation?
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Well, actually that's what I was just going to say about the speed aspect that John was talking about, that I was just in a talk by JURA Bio. And they were talking about how using-- they're heavily using AI. They have a machine learning platform to match TCRs with antigens and how now they can do things so much more quickly into such a larger scale using AI than they could in the past.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: So that was just one example of where it's like, everything's just moving so much faster.
JOHN STERLING: Yeah.
KEVIN DAVIS: OK. Julianna, John's been covering this field for decades. You've been covering it for about three weeks. So what have been your impressions of the show overall and what specific themes have interested you the most?
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: I'd go a little bit of what I said yesterday, Kevin. Just the importance of this field in the greater landscape of developing therapies, bringing treatments to patients faster. And again, how challenging all of this is from the upstream to the downstream to the scale. I mean, scale is the Achilles heel for almost every single industry that we cover. So just how they're tackling that here and how in a lot of ways-- like John said yesterday, it's not as sexy as some of the headlines, but it is the absolute foundation of the drug discovery that's going on.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: So I mean, I'm just left with that impression, I think, again. But also how a lot of the other technologies that we cover, especially omics, for example, AI and things like that, how they're all playing into this area as well. It all comes together here.
KEVIN DAVIS: Yeah.
JOHN STERLING: There were three sessions today on gene editing in vivo. And again, this is in a bioprocessing conference. I didn't get to go to those, but I passed by and saw that. But picking up with what Julianna said, yeah, it's a lot of people, I think, are beginning to understand. Because Julianna has a pure research background. That's all great and that's where everything starts. But unless you can manufacture that efficiently and in reasonable price, you're not going to go anywhere.
JOHN STERLING: So that's what's great. What I really enjoyed today, though, was I've been covering these so long. I met two gentlemen, one who was from academia. I know him-- I haven't seen him in 10 years. I met him about 30 years ago. He did a lot of advances in bioreactor technology. He started in this university. Then he founded a company which he still-- it's got to be maybe late '70s.
JOHN STERLING: He still works every day. And then another person who knew our publisher very well-- Mary-Ann Liebert. He has a company. And I said, geez, I remember when I met you-- where was it? And he actually came to Larchmont when we were there about 10 years ago. But everybody else here is completely new, which is fun getting to meet new people.
JOHN STERLING: But it's nice to see two people who have been in the industry quite some time and I think get a little bit more about what this is all about.
KEVIN DAVIS: Absolutely.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Oh.
KEVIN DAVIS: Go ahead, Julianna.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: The other, Kevin, I was mentioning is that when you ask about digitalization, there's about five maybe digital twin companies here. And so that's something we've covered in GEN and I think would be also a big focus going forward. So that's just been another hot topic that I've noticed here.
JOHN STERLING: Yeah. I think the first stories we ran in our daily bioprocess newsletter probably four or five years ago. And we get a number of those every year.
KEVIN DAVIS: Yeah.
JOHN STERLING: So, as I said yesterday, the people who put this conference together really have their finger in the air, catching which way the winds are blowing. And the answer is always right on top of the latest technologies and developments.
KEVIN DAVIS: Well, how's that rock band doing? I can't hear anything with this end.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: He just stopped, actually.
KEVIN DAVIS: It stopped?
JOHN STERLING: I think they switched to quiet jazz. You can't hear it.
KEVIN DAVIS: Yeah.
JOHN STERLING: Very low level.
KEVIN DAVIS: It sounds good on paper but loud rock music on an exhibit floor, where you're actually trying to have a business conversation, is not really a great-- not a great fit.
JOHN STERLING: Sometimes even during the lunch.
KEVIN DAVIS: Speaking of the exhibit floor, you've been cruising up and down the aisles. So what has stood out, if anything? Which companies are really making a splash there this week?
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Lot of new products in everybody's booths. I mean, everybody has a lot of new products. I spoke with PhenomeX yesterday. And so this is a company that is actually-- Berkeley Lights and IsoPlexis came together to form PhenomeX. And they were released-- so it's proteomics, kind of, protein identification. So they were releasing a new panel where you can-- actually, not just identify but quantify different immune cytokines.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: So that seemed interesting to me, especially in the omics world, which is where I like to play normally.
JOHN STERLING: And along with that, you were saying before about the three years we were closed off from the pandemic. You expect these companies to be very excited and just so fantastically happy with these new products. I see a higher level of that here. And I was thinking about that, what you said today. It's almost like all of this attention on their products was bottled up for three years. And now they're back in the public arena.
JOHN STERLING: It's not on video or on press releases. It's they're right here. And everybody just seems very enthusiastic and positive about the industry, which is great for everybody, including us.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Yeah, there's a really nice energy here. I mean, the rock band, there's video games over there. It's like it's kind of a party.
JOHN STERLING: Yeah.
KEVIN DAVIS: What's happening this evening? So I hear lawn party. Is that correct?
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Yeah. I guess there's a party on the lawn. So with some food and maybe more band.
JOHN STERLING: I'm sure more bands.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: We'll see. But I guess it's a BPI staple, so party on the lawn.
JOHN STERLING: Yeah.
KEVIN DAVIS: Well, John, you're a BPI royalty. You've been covering BPI as well as genetic engineering for a long time. So I hope you enjoy the rest of the event. Any closing words before we wrap off for another year?
JOHN STERLING: Well, again, what I said yesterday, what's most impressive is the number of companies that now exist. When I started, it was in the hundreds. I mean, there's, I'm sure, hundreds here. But the universe is much larger, and I'm aware of that. And again, just the enthusiasm. I haven't seen it like this in some time, partly due to the pandemic. And just because there's more new products that are being approved.
JOHN STERLING: So people now see that there's a positive end game to what all they're doing.
KEVIN DAVIS: Yeah. Good. Well, let's close it there. We're monopolizing you. You need to go log some more steps and go network with some more people before you depart. So thanks very much. We've enjoyed the second of two check-ins from the BPI conference at the convention center in Boston. Julianna Lemieux, GEN's deputy editor; John Sterling, GEN's chief editor; and I'm Kevin Davis.
KEVIN DAVIS: Thanks for watching. And look for all this content to be written up in record time to be published on the GEN's site and in Gen Magazine in the weeks and months ahead. Thanks for watching. Bye.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Bye.
JOHN STERLING: And my final thought, Kevin.
KEVIN DAVIS: Go ahead.
JOHN STERLING: Wish you were here.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: See you later, Kevin.
KEVIN DAVIS: OK. Bye.
JOHN STERLING: Bye-bye.
JULIANNA LEMIEUX: Bye.