Biotech
Policymakers seek ways to diversify biotech workforce
San Francisco Business Times - by Ron Leuty
A plan beats platitudes and plaudits any day. Cash is even better.
While California’s budget troubles continue to put the screws to education, Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee in late October gathered biotech employers, job trainers, educators and others into an Emeryville conference room.
The big conundrum: How can educators, politicians, nonprofits and the biotech industry bring more minorities into the biotech workforce?
Among the speakers were Lee; her former Washington colleague, Jim Greenwood, now president and CEO of the powerful Biotechnology Industry Organization; California state Sen. Ellen Corbett, the East Bay legislator who chairs the Senate’s select committee on biotechnology; Assemblyman Sandré Swanson, chair of the Assembly’s labor and employment committee; and BayBIO boss Matt Gardner.
A power-packed lineup, indeed, with the requisite thank-yous to politicos for their past support and tsk-tsks about the state of funding today. But leave it to an educator from a relatively small East Bay college to cut to the quick and offer a plan for today and the future.
Michael Leung, dean of the College of Science at California State University-East Bay in Hayward, outlined a three-Rs plan: recognition, recruitment and retention.
First, young minorities must be made aware of biotech’s opportunities. They must be introduced to math and science earlier in school, told that the science is “do-able” and have strong role models.
Second, the biotech industry must help educators develop curricula for middle school and high school students, and school counselors need to encourage minorities to focus on those courses as they target biotech careers.
Third, keep hammering home the message and provide ongoing support for things like tutoring as a way to keep the pipeline of minority job candidates flowing.
“Dropping out, not being able to retain them, is the same as not recruiting them,” Leung said.
Part of the problem, of course, is funding.
Time is another problem. The biotech industry must communicate the fundamental skills it needs in new hires — giving educators and job trainers a better chance to train long-term workers, Leung said — “rather than trying to react to jobs that won’t be available in two to three years when the program courses come online.”
As far as funding, Lee noted that Congress will approach the federal Health and Human Services budget for math and science budgets differently next year.
What exactly that means is unclear, but time is of the essence: Three weeks after Lee’s gathering, under pressure due to state funding cuts, the Cal State system said it expects to turn away as many as 10,000 eligible students who want to enroll next fall.
Berkeley’s Aerovance set for upcoming Phase II trial
Privately held Aerovance Inc., a Berkeley drug development spinout of Bayer that is tackling respiratory and allergic diseases, is gearing up for a Phase II trial for its lead product candidate.
But to get that asthma drug, Aerovant, and an eczema treatment through the end of 2010, President and CEO Mark Perry said Aerovance must raise $50 million.
The 424 patients in the trial with severe asthma will deliver a dry powder form of Aerovance’s human recombinant protein with a handheld device. That’s a different tactic from an earlier Phase II study that used a liquid form of the drug.
“It’s technically challenging,” Perry said about the dry powder. “You have to get the right particle size so it gets to the right part of the lung and behaves the right way.”
It makes sense to spray the powder, Perry said, because it is a familiar treatment for asthma patients.
Aerovance, which has 22 employees, will test Aerovant at more than 80 sites, including clinics in Germany, Poland and Hungary.
A few drugs — including Genentech Inc.’s Xolair — are on the market for so-called “uncontrolled” asthma patients. Those are patients who have been on drugs in other classes, often in combinations.
Data from the trial is expected in early 2010, Perry said.
“If (investors) agree with us that the data from the next study will be a positive, it will be a big value-creation event in a matter of months,” Perry said.
rleuty@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4939
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