Writing The Book Of Life

If knowledge is power, then everyone interested in biodiversity, from biologist to conservation lawyer, is about to become far more powerful. Until now, information about the diverse forms of life that inhabit the earth has been spread across myriad publications. With skill, tenacity, and a lot of time one could eventually gather a significant fraction of the high-quality information known about the Caribbean Monk Seal, Eastern Cottonwood, Elkhorn Coral, or Giant Amoeba. However, with approximately 17 000 000 Linnaean species thought to exist currently, such laborious efforts, especially when uncoordinated among those interested in the information, are wasteful, inefficient, and slow. This situation is a significant impediment to the academic study of biodiversity, often requiring biologists to duplicate research efforts. Even worse, it acts as a serious hurdle to legal efforts to conserve threatened organisms since gaps in knowledge often lead to gaps in effective actions.

The Encyclopedia of Life ("EOL") offers a solution. Soon to launched, this web-based initiative describes its mission and contents as follows:

Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.

The first project of the EOL will be to gather, collate, and synthesize information about the 1 800 000 Linnaean species currently extant. Though a huge undertaking, the benefits of the EOL to both biology and conservation are potentially enormous. As Harvard University Professor E.O. Wilson eloquently stated in his acceptance of the 2007 TED award, the EOL could be "the key tool we need to inspire preservation of earth's biodiversity." If combined with a similar web-based resource analyzing and synthesizing biodiversity laws (coming soon, so watch this space), many current excuses for inaction on conservation issues could begin to melt away.

BioLaw At BIO 2007: Once And Future Genetown

According to many of the founding myths of the industry, biotechnology was born in Boston. Regardless of when Beantown became Genetown, Boston is now the global capital of biotechnology. From elephants, such as Biogen, Genzyme, Vertex, and Millennium, to gazelles, such as Alnylam, Microbia, and TKT, Massachusetts Avenue between Harvard and MIT bursts and thrusts with the present and future of genes, stem cells, and interference RNA.

However, the celebratory spirit of the biotechnology industry as a whole, so evident at BIO 2007, has been tinged by palpable disquiet on the part of the locals. While the global biotechnology industry has set records for revenues, merger and acquisition activity, venture capital funding, and new drugs, many in Boston are worried that this very success augurs ill for Boston’s dominance. In fact, BIO 2007 has seen numerous free receptions, parties, billboards, pamphlets, and exhibition booths aggressively aimed at luring Boston companies to relocate to jurisdictions like Scotland, India, and Kansas, where prices are lower, skilled labor is abundant, and governments provide generous subsidies.

Boston fought back this morning. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced a $1 billion fund to help ensure that biotechnology remains ascendant in its hometown. At The Barking Crab – a restaurant emblematic of Boston’s first great biology-based industry, seafood – five young stars of Boston’s legal community expressed their optimism to me that Patrick’s new measure would be a beneficial one. In fact, they expressed optimism that one of the factors making Boston such a welcoming incubator to new biotechnology start-ups - local communities of highly skilled professionals specializing in servicing the often complex and challenging legal and business needs of such companies - will benefit especially.

What is certain is that, as biotechnology becomes a global force, driving both economies and human futures, competition to become the next Genetown – and, perhaps, to displace the current one - is becoming fierce.

BioLaw at BIO 2007: Cells Are The New Pills

Three BIOs ago, in San Francisco, I happened upon a low-key, pre-dinner presentation on stem cells. Moderated by Charlie Rose, four Nobel Prize winners sat on a low dais and expressed an unexpectedly uniform and strong opinion: stem cells were going to remake biology and medicine, and they would do so in the astoundingly brief period of a decade or two. Despite being hungry, sleepy, and eager to move on to the evening's social events after a long day of complicated, technical lectures, delivered in dark rooms at the Moscone Convention Center, the enthusiasm of the speakers for stem cell technology infected even this toughest of crowds.

This year BIO has devoted an entire "track" of sessions to stem cells (officially spun here as "Regenerative Medicine"). I just attended the first of these: "Current Affairs In U.S. Stem Cell Research". It was dynamite. Where three short years ago, the distinguished elder gentlemen of biology were predicting the great potential of stem cells, today four leading stem cell biologists shared not only their views of the future, but, more remarkably, their data, clinical models, product pipelines, and already delivered therapies. Lawrence Goldstein (UCSD Stem Cell Progam) discussed his research on using stem neural cells to understand Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's diseases. Thomas Okarma (CEO, Geron Corporation) reflected on his quarter century in stem cell research, and detailed Geron's clinical trials on the use of stem cells to repair spinal cord injuries. He also stressed the particular promise of human mesochymal stem cells. Mark Hedrick (President, Cytori) outlined his company's approach to strengthening heart muscle damaged by myocardial infarction by injecting stem cells into precise regions of underperforming heart tissue, and then showed a short film of the procedure being used in the O.R.. Joseph Panetta (President and CEO, BIOCOM) then discussed possible connections between stem cells and the cellular origins of cancers, suggesting that such a connection can be useful not only in studying the etiology of cancers, but also in treating such cancers once they arise.

The participants made a number of remarkable pronouncements about present and future of stem cell technology. As at BIO 2004, great optimism was the rule. Goldstein remarked that "This is the technology that is going to let us harvest human genomics", and that "[Just as genetic engineering had done at the advent of of the biotechnology revolution], stem cell technology may change the way we do everything." Okarma predicted that "At first, the improvements will be incremental. Be patient. In the long run this is going to be the revolution we all hoped for."

The participants did, however, mention roadblocks to stem cell therapies. Panetta lamented the adverse effect that the WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation) stem cell patents have had in impeding and discouraging the development of stem cell therapies, but did rejoice at a recent rejection of the validity of three key WARF patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Goldstein described current NIH funding as "a disaster gathering speed", while Okarma complained that "This country has really harmed the rate at which the bigness [of stem cell technology] will happen."

It was Panetta who best captured the Zeitgeist here at BIO 2007, in waxing that "The 21st Century is the century of the cell." With such immense scientific progress in only three years, as well as new legal and policy initiatives by such states as Missouri, Massachusetts, and California to the ensure the legality of embryonic stem cell research, his prediction has some basis.

BioLaw At BIO

Courtesy of a press pass generously awarded by the Biotechnology Industry Organization ("BIO"), BioLaw will be reporting from the 2007 BIO International Convention in Boston from May 6th-9th.

Every year the BIO meetings attract the global who's who of biotechnology to discuss what's what in the field. Almost 30,000 participants from around the globe will converge on Boston, the hometown of biotechnology, to present and discuss topics in the following 21 tracks: Bench to Products, Biopreparedness, Bioethics, Business Development, Clinical Research/Clinical Trials, Devices and Predictive Diagnostics, Doing Business Globally, Drug Discovery and Development, Emerging Company Issues, Finance, Food and Agriculture, Global Health, Industrial and Environmental, Intellectual Property/Legal, International Seminars, Manufacturing, Policy, Public Relations/Investor Relations, Regenerative Medicine, Regulatory, Technology Transfer/Licensing.

Watch this space for coverage of biolaw issues at BIO.