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OAKLAND - Meeting with some of the leading large pharmaceutical firms headquartered in Europe - GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Aventis, Roche, and Bayer - fifteen  California biotechnology companies report potential partnership deals that could be worth up to a total of $400 million in two years or more.

The potential deals are a result of initial contacts made During the first California Biotechnology Trade Mission to BioSquare - the recent European biotechnology partnering conference in Lyon, France.  
 
"We are trying to identify major European and US "pharma" companies to partner on our antibody discovery capabilities as well as to license our drug candidates for global development," said Dr. Joseph Fisher, mission participant and senior manager for business development of Raven Biotechnologies, Inc., based in South San Francisco.

According to leading San Francisco-based life sciences merchant bank Burrill & Company's Biotech 2003, partnership deals are the cornerstone of biotechnology industry and were valued at $7.5 billion in 2002. 

Since 1993 partnership collaborations between big pharma and new biotech increased 359%, peaking in 2001.  Moreover, between the boom and bust years of 2000 and 2001, while private VC biotech funding dropped from $2.9 billion to $2.4 billion and public biotech IPOs drastically fell from $6.5 billion to $440 million, the number of big pharma and biotech partnerships deals grew from 373 deals in 2000 to 425 deals in 2001. 

There was only a modest 3% drop in pharma-biotech partnership deals between 2001 and 2002.

At the same time, big pharma is suffering from an innovation gap in the number of its new drug approvals and is increasingly looking to biotech startups for new technologies.  With pre-clinical deal sizes going up, large pharma is increasingly reaching into the earlier stages of the drug development process and investing more in research and development, according to Burrill & Company. 
 
"Since many of the leading large pharmaceutical firms are headquartered in Europe, there was excellent interest in our first trade mission to the BioSquare European biotech partnering conference. With this program, we intend to organize future California biotech missions to partnering conferences and trade shows throughout Western Europe," said Dr. Sam Doctors, CEO of ACET Incubator and the lead mission organizer. 
 
"Our current commercialization needs include the development of partners and clients, in both Europe and Asia, for our discovery biology platform technologies targeted at the pharma, diagnostic and ag/bio industries. Our strategic plans include the eventual development of a local physical presence in both regions to directly service these relationships," said Jeff Peterson, mission participant and CEO of Target Discovery.

Target Discovery's transformational technology and anticipated industry impact has attracted over $7 million in equity funding from private investors.

The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, south of San Francisco in Silicon Valley.

"We found the California trade mission to be a cost-effective and high value-added way to participate in these major European bio-partnering conferences. We also realized a high-level of value from the additional networking events organized by the California mission outside of the actual BioSquare conference," added Peterson.

Broadly experienced in international business, Peterson served as CEO and General Manager of Abbott South Africa, doubling the sales and tripling the income of this 50 year-old business in 3.5 years, while guiding it through the tumult of South Africa's political transition.
 
The BioSquare partnering conference held in Lyon, France offered a "matchmaking" forum that provided each California firm, on average, with eighteen pre-arranged one-on-one meetings with potential partners at the conference during the 3-day conference.

Seventy-five percent of the California firms were selected to present as part of the BioSquare agenda. This year's BioSquare Conference had 900 company participants from 31 countries and a total of 2,750 one-on-one meetings were scheduled between companies during the conference.

In addition to attending the BioSquare partnering conference, mission organizers also collaborated with two French biotechnology industry associations - BioTeam Paris / Evry and the Lyon Life Sciences Network - to offer additional presentations, partnering, and networking events for California Mission companies prior to the BioSquare conference.
 
This fall, mission organizers plan to conduct two California Biotechnology Trade Missions to Germany, including the Biotechnica trade show in Hannover this October 7-9 and the BioEurope partnering conference this November 17-19 in Frankfurt. 
 
The EU Export Initiative is a partnership made up of ACET Incubator in Alameda, the Bay Area World Trade Center in Oakland, and the California Technology, Trade, and Commerce Agency.

The EU Export Initiative accelerates market adoption of new technologies by capitalizing on more favorable markets in Europe for California's biomedical products. 

The EU Export Initiative is funded by the US Department of Commerce's Market Development Cooperator Grant (MDCP) and matching resources from each of the three partner organizations. 

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