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More than 75 late-stage biotech founders, investors and commercial real estate networked and attended a live panel in Downtown San Diego at the new IQHQ $1.6 billion-dollar campus built for the next wave of innovative biotech companies.
The private event overlooked San Diego’s waterfront and was sponsored by top organizations in conjunction with the week-long BIO International Convention.
After the keynote, there was a 30-minute panel discussion, which brought together successful late-stage biotech executives including Ken Song and Tom Miller alongside Tracy Murphy the president of IQHQ, also known as the Research and Development District (RaDD) in near the San Diego waterfront park.
The conversation was centered around whether Downtown will become the best place to grow the life science company — which has historically has been in Torrey Pines, UTC. Overall the mood among the crowd was optimistic on San Diego’s future as it related to the booming life science ecosystem.
Biotech Veteran Inspires with Keynote
“I've lived through a period of incredible innovation and change in San Diego,” William Rastetter, serial biotech CEO and co-founder of nonprofit SD2, told the packed crowd during a 45-minute keynote on Tuesday, June 4.
These days Rastetter remains hard at work, trying to make the life science industry more diverse, with his non-profit San Diego Squared. It’s hard not to root for him and his co-founder H. Puentes, who leads the organization as executive director.
Mr. Rastetter spent ten minutes sharing success stories in biotech, emphasized the importance of doing the “impossible,” and provided insight on how small biotechs can “out compete” legacy corporations Pfizer Bristol, Myers Squibb, to name a few.
"I remember coming to this little navy town back in 1987,” said Rastetter, who is one of the most successful biotech executives and has served on boards of prominent companies including publicly-traded Illumina.
“I'd get in the car and drive to Downtown San Diego at about 85 miles an hour with no traffic. Del Mar had barren, red clay hills at the time … Today it’s been reshaped as Del Mar Heights — it’s shocking just how much things have changed.”
Today, roughly 1 out of every 30 employed in San Diego works in the life science industry. Nearly half the major real estate deals in this town are life-science-related.
Over the last 40 years, 100’s of startups have been spun out of local university and research labs such as UCSD, Salk Institute and have headquartered themselves in the greater San Diego area — many of them based in La Jolla, Torrey Pines, Sorrento Valley and UTC.
These companies, including successful firms such as Illumina, Viracta Therapeutics, Hybritech, and Genentech, which have employed thousands of people combined.
Takeaways from the Panel
Following the inspiring keynote delivered by Mr. Rastetter, attendees at the event also heard from IQHQ co-CEO Tracey Murphy and two San Diego biotech entrepreneurs Thomas Miller and Ken Song.
The conversation was moderated by Grace Colon, who sits on the board of BIO.org and is building a new biotech company in stealth.
San Diego strongly holds its position as a top 3 life science hub in the nation — only behind Boston and San Francisco, respectively. Ken Song could not agree more.
“If you look over the last recent period of time in both IPOs as well as M&A transactions,” said Ken Song, former President and Chief Executive Officer at RayzeBio. “There's a disproportionate number of those transactions that happened right here in San Diego.”
Over the last year, San Diego has attracted dozens of high profile biotech CEOs, many who are moving to the region for better quality of living and aspire to build the next billion-dollar-plus startup, including Iambic Therapeutics CEO.
“San Diego is an extraordinary place to build a company,” said Thomas Miller, Co-Founder and CEO at Iambic Therapeutics. “I was personally based in the LA area, and we decided to build this company in San Diego because of its incredible depth of life science and technology expertise.”
Now that funding rounds for biotechs are finally happening again, IQHQ is hoping the investment for its 1.7 million square foot project will pay off. It’s one of the country's largest life-sciences projects and is currently seeking tenants.
“San Diego has matured a lot in the last decade,” said Tracey Murphy, Co-CEO at IQHQ. “The thesis of the RaDD project in Downtown is centered around supporting life science’s industry’s growing labor workforce. We also believe that it will offer better transit for commuting workers, and will level up San Diego to become more on par with San Francisco and Boston ecosystems.”