PHASTAR at the BIO Conference

We attended last week's BIO Conference in Boston. The theme was "Making History" - celebrating 25 years since the BIO organisation came into being and the subsequent innovations that have been introduced, as well as looking to our future. There were over 18,000 attendees, and the conference won a Guinness World Record for 46,916 partnering meetings that took place - the most in any business conference ever. We felt that PHASTAR contributed to this record as we met more companies than last year and were 100% fully booked on the partnering system.

Many of the attendees are early stage biotech entrepreneurs who are seeking to find financial support from investors or more established companies. Our key message this year was to seek statistical support before financial budgets are finalised. Although there are times when a statistician will say that more patients are needed, at PHASTAR we have a checklist of around 20 items that enable us to reduce the number of subjects required in a study, covering both optimisation of clinical trial design and analysis. As scientists it is our duty to ensure that properly designed trials are conducted with the minimum amount of subjects exposed to potential risks of clinical trials.

We also took the opportunity to visit a number of local Boston companies to showcase our latest statistics, programming and data management services. It's obvious the local pharmaceutical and biotech industry is flourishing. It's also a great opportunity to catch up on latest industry trends with "fireside chats" from senior representatives of Novartis, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson (amongst others).

As a company with an interest in supporting new cell and gene therapy treatments, we were excited to hear FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb state that he believed there would be 40 new gene therapy treatments approved by 2022, and that he hoped there would be cures for diseases like sickle cell anaemia within the next 10 years. We welcome the announcement that gene therapies require a different approval approach, and that the FDA will publish six new guidance documents in the near future.

We were also pleased to hear that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the formation of a new not-for-profit biotech company that will focus on finding treatments for diseases that predominantly affect the poor, such as malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhoea, which between them cause around 2.6 million worldwide deaths a year.

Meeting so many people who are all dedicated to fighting disease is always a fun occasion. The BIO Organisers also do a great job of providing entertainment for everyone, with a particular highlight this year being a Diana Ross concert, which was particularly fun (you can see my videos from the event on YouTube).

I'll be back in Boston for DIA Global during the last week in June 2018. If you'd like to find out more about our services, please get in touch via [email protected].