Indianapolis StarBrainstorming for biotechsTechnology's role in research is one topic at today's summit October 31, 2006 The event brings together the people with the book knowledge and the people with the business savvy, organizers say, and they hope it will help them come out with a way to transition and augment Indiana's economy from an agricultural and manufacturing base to a new "knowledge economy." David Johnson, president of the biotech promoting nonprofit group Biocrossroads, said the goal of the conference is to bring people together and "translate high intelligence value into market value." Conference attendees will focus on technology's application in science research, how Indiana is doing in developing technologies and how those new technologies can help Indiana's economy grow -- especially in the life sciences. "You don't have life-science companies without information technology," said Cameron Carter, president and chief executive of Techpoint, the trade group coordinating the conference. "You aren't mapping the human genome . . . without robust information technology," he said. "Modern commerce is predicated on it." In one seminar entitled "Brilliant Minds, Powerful Technology & Life Sciences: Pushing the Frontiers of Knowledge for Indiana," professors and researchers from Indiana University, Purdue University and IU-Purdue Indianapolis will discuss their partnership with the National Cancer Institute to find and perfect cancer-marking proteins. Purdue and IU recently received a $7 million grant from the Cancer Institute for that purpose. The NCI is spending more than $100 million in an effort to find more cancer-detecting proteins -- and get them approved for use. To that end, universities across the country have been selected to help study and refine the proteins. Fred Regnier, a Purdue biochemist in charge of the Purdue-IU part of the research effort, said proteins that can find and help fight cancer aren't being discovered fast enough. "There's no technology to do that," he said. Michael McRobbie, interim provost at IU-Bloomington and longtime head of the university's information technology efforts, said today's conference will give people a chance to discuss and take a look at technology that will do the grunt work of life-science research and development. "There are many areas you don't do -- or be competitive in -- without information technology," McRobbie said. "You need some of the IT areas to do the life-science areas. You need supercomputers that enable you to calculate the size and shape of molecules." In another Tech Summit seminar, entitled "Leveraging Innovation, Talent and Investment to Build Life Science Companies," industry leaders from the medical, pharmaceutical and biotech fields will discuss how Indiana can take the lead in the life-science industry. Nathan Feltman, executive vice president of the Indiana Economic Development Corp., said his office will be at the conference to promote, among other things, the state's interest in the development of more biotech companies. "We want to lure back entrepreneurs, and we want to lure back people," said Feltman, who will take over as Indiana's secretary of commerce and head of the IEDC in January. He said Indiana's relatively recent influx of state support and its long history of strong life- science and pharmaceutical companies, combined with its large research base at universities, have primed the state Indiana to develop a stronger presence in the life-science industry. "We've got a lot of the basic assets," he said. "Indiana is perfectly positioned . . . to really be in front of some of the newer developments in the life-science industry."
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