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The September San Diego Biotechnology Network (SDBN) event will feature Intellikine, a leader in the development of innovative, small molecule drugs for the treatment of cancer, inflammation and autoimmune diseases, and recently in the news for raising $51M in VC funding. Troy Wilson, Ph.D., CEO, will give a short presentation, and as always there will be plenty of time to ask questions and interact with representatives from Intellikine.

Troy Wilson is the President, CEO and a founder of Intellikine, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of small molecule drugs that target the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway for the treatment of cancer, inflammation and other diseases. Dr. Wilson is a serial entrepreneur who previously has co-founded several San Diego based companies, including Ambrx and Phenomix. In his presentation, Dr. Wilson will describe Intellikine’s formation, the scientific and clinical rationale behind its drug discovery programs, its business development and corporate strategy, and how the company was able recently to raise $51 million in venture capital in a very challenging market. The presentation should be of interest to scientists, entrepreneurs, clinicians and anyone interested in how to translate world-class academic science into a leading biotech company.

Event Details

Who: Biotechnology professionals in the greater San Diego area
What: San Diego Biotechnology Network’s September Networking Event featuring Intellikine
When: Tuesday, September 22nd, 5:30-9:00 p.m.
Where: Tango Del Rey, 3567 Del Rey Street, San Diego 92109 (Directions below)
Cost: $20, including appetizers ($15 for Academics) +$5 at door (cash or check only)
Contact: http://sdbn.org/contact
For more information about the event: http://sdbn.org/september

Directions: From the North: South on Interstate 5, Exit Balboa Ave, Straight to 4th Traffic Light then left on Bunker Hill St. Building directly ahead 3 blks. From the South: North on Interstate 5, Exit Grand/ Garnet Ave, Straight to 3rd Traffic Light then right on Bunker Hill St. Building directly ahead 3 blks. Park on the street or in the structure just past Tango del Rey.

Dr. Ali R. Esteghlalian is a Principal Scientist and Product Manager, Emerging Specialty Enzyme Products at Verenium Corporation (San Diego, California, USA.) He has been involved in enzyme applications research & management, as well as bioproduct development for more than ten years. He specializes in the application of polysaccharide degrading enzymes in natural fiber processing and pretreatment and bioconversion of lignocellulosic feedstocks for biofuels production. Working with major industrial clients worldwide, he currently directs the product management activities for a diverse portfolio of specialty enzyme products with applications in the pulp and paper bleaching operations, textile wet processing, and oil and gas well drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations.

Prior to joining Verenium in 2002, Dr. Esteghlalian was a Research Fellow with the Chair of Forest Products Biotechnology at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), where he conducted experimental research to elucidate the interactions between cellulolytic enzymes (cellulases) and lignocellulosic substrates. Specifically, he studied the factors affecting the enzymatic hydrolysis of softwood and hardwood derived pulp and steam-exploded wood during the lignocellulose-to-bioethanol process. Additionally, he has been involved in the assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from a range of agricultural and silvicultural practices for bioenergy production. The results of his R&D studies have been captured in a number of patents, book chapters and peer-reviewed articles.

Dr. Esteghlalian holds degrees in Chemical Engineering (B.Sc., Tehran University, Iran) and Bioengineering (Ph.D., Oregon State University, USA). He will also receive his MBA from the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego in August 2010. He conducted his postdoctoral research/teaching at the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia, USA), where he focused on how to incorporate environmental and societal factors into engineering solutions. Dr. Esteghlalian is a Senior Member of American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICHE), American Chemical Society (ACS), Technical Association of Pulp and Paper Industries (TAPPI) and American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE). He resides in San Diego, California and can be reached by phone at +1 858 526 5108 or by email at ali(dot)esteghlalian(at)verenium(dot)com.

San Diego County biotech in 2008 represented the third largest community for developing the next generation of biopharmaceuticals and cutting edge therapies. The impact of the financial crisis and funding shortfall is accelerating trends set by outsourcing and offshoring. Yet there is light at the end of the tunnel. Many companies based in San Diego are making breakthroughs and driving changes with their leading technologies. SDBN and PGC200 are partnering to bring you key people from these companies so that you can hear directly how these changes will help our economy and how we can adapt to prosper.

Vote for the area that you would like to hear about most at our August 18th event, which will be a panel of experts from the area who will focus on the best ways we can grow. As always, this won’t be your grandfather’s panel, we will do our best to involve you in the discussion, turning the event into a brainstorming session which will give you ideas for improving your career and business. Also, there will be plenty of time for networking with the thought leaders on the panel and other biotechnology professionals.

(The poll is now closed, and you can view the results here.)

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If you attended the Social Media for Scientists Event we had in May, you know that we are aiming to get more of you involved in the SDBN. One of the ways is through inviting you to write blog posts on the SDBN site. You can blog about events you attend, news or trends (any UC postdocs want to blog about the recent unionization?), or scientific topics of interest.

What’s in it for you? You’ll get exposure for yourself and your company/institution to the San Diego Biotechnology community (including hiring managers!) and experience blogging without having to start your own blog. Just submit your ideas to http://sdbn.org/iwannablog and we’ll be in touch to get the content.

Be creative–look for trends, anything newsworthy that you have unique insights on, or amusing things around you. Guides that others may find useful are also good, such as a list of resources. The tone can be amusing or irreverent, but we always want to have the aim of promoting biotechnology in the region.

We’ll look forward to hearing from you!

During our May 28th Social Media for Scientists (SMS) SDBN event, William Gunn talked about friendfeed as a useful tool for discussing science and learning. We polled the attendees before the event and found that they knew almost nothing about it, and had little interest in learning about it. We set up a friendfeed room for the group and frankly have not had much adoption.

So, what’s so great about friendfeed, why do we keep talking about it? Friendfeed aggregates all of your activity on social media, so that when you post anything on twitter, your blog, Flickr, etc. (58 social media applications are available), all of your connections there see it. Now, think of this used with a scientific ‘persona,’ if you will. You can share interesting articles, blog posts, presentations–some people even post data on Flickr–with your colleagues. Every post can be commented on, leading to interesting discussions. See this example of how friendfeed was used to stimulate and manage discussions regarding the conference, and the interest was so high that posts were thought to be spam!

Friendfeed takes it one step further, allowing you to form and join groups which focus on topics (see table below). You can benefit from group members’ posts, ask questions of the group, and take part in the discussions from any post. Scientists have been using the web to interact via forums and mailing list for a long time (we even discussed friendfeed vs. these older ways of communicating there). While someone pointed out that there is ‘nothing wrong with the old forums and mailing lists’ and that ‘you can post longer items using the old methods’ I see real value in the ‘2.0′ forms of communicating such as friendfeed. With these types of social media, as with media such as twitter, often people post interesting observations that lead to unexpected comments and new directions–there is a level of serendipitous discovery that occurs. Also, because the groups are full of like-minded people, there is not much noise, and even discussions that are tangential to your work can be interesting. As William Gunn pointed out in our SMS presentation, you can also search all posts and comments from your friends or groups, leading to one of the most targeted web searches available (bing, eat your heart out).

One thing that I find incredibly interesting is that these groups can also become commentaries on larger issues. See the References Wanted group below–it is a repository for articles that scientists cannot access freely, and thus a commentary on the need for more open access science, paradigms that journals such as PLoS subscribe to. In addition, you’ll find that the scientists on friendfeed are keen to learn about new tools–see the Evernote Addicts group, a group dedicated to software for aggregating information that scientists (and others) find very useful. As with other types of social media, it is not clear what the lifetime of friendfeed’s relevancy will be, but you can be sure that the people here will be ahead of the curve in knowing what the ‘next big thing’ for scientists will be, even if it means moving away from friendfeed or being a ‘force’ to help change it.

As with other social media, the best way to learn is to try it yourself. I suggest signing up and subscribing to the groups below, getting email updates for convenience at first. We realize that some of you are still hesitant to join, and that’s OK. It turns out that Facebook and friendfeed have a lot of similarities, as a fan page can be set up for a group of people, and items can be posted on and discussed among members. We set up a SDBN fan page for this purpose, become a fan and start posting and interacting! We hope that it will give you a ‘taste’ of ’serendipitous scientific social media’ and that you’ll be inspired to participate in tools such as friendfeed. We’ll also continue to help you learn more about the tools for science in social media through blog posts and events. As we mentioned at the SMS event, participating in social media gives you a way to get a ‘leg up’ from your colleagues in real time, and we think that once you start experiencing it, you’ll be as hooked as we are!

P.S. On friendfeed there is even a discussion on this post!

Friendfeed Groups for Life Scientists: Some Examples

Don’t see a group that interests you? Search the friendfeed groups for your research area or anything you’re interested in, or start your own!

Posted by Mary Canady of Comprendia, which helps life scientists and the industry improve communication through social media and marketing strategies. Special thanks to Sally Church of Icarus Consultants & PharmaStrategyBlog for helping with the list of groups, and to the friendfeed life scientists group, who let this ‘marketer in scientist clothing’ participate in the group. Also thanks to William Gunn, for help and convincing me to persist with friendfeed even though I didn’t ‘get it’ at first.

At the recent Social Media for Scientists Event, we talked about the fact that the trends you are seeing in ‘everyday life’ such as increased utilization of the internet to communicate, are also finding their way into scientific research. This is also true for the ‘YouTube’ revolution–there are an increasing number of video sites and resources for scientists. They range from visualized experiments, to reviews of current research and events, to wacky and fun ‘kitchen science’ such as the nerdiest ways to slice butter.

The resources range from dedicated sites and communities to simple YouTube playlists (see also this resource which lists independent resources with an emphasis on medicine). UCSD/SDSC’s Phil Bourne has started SciVee, which is a website dedicated to “changing the pace at which science is conducted and communicated.” You can participate by joining the independent sites and/or creating an account in YouTube and subscribing to the channels. Also, as with all social media, you’ll get the most out of it by participating directly. You can create your own playlists or even create your own videos–small video cameras are inexpensive and take great videos. Also, we’d LOVE to see your videos of local events, and we’ll feature them here and on YouTube. As always, we welcome your comments/additions!

Special thanks to the folks at the friendfeed Life Scientists group for helping me compile this list, especially @BoraZ. Here is the original post, it illustrates the power of friendfeed!

You may know I’m a blogger at the Biotechnology Industry Organization convention in Atlanta. I’m here and adjusting to the time change. I’m eager to cover stories about San Diego Biotech–we’ve got a lot going on here! Today Paul Grayson, CEO of Fate Therapeutics, and Ian Ratcliffe, CEO of Stemgent, will be speaking in the ‘Mastering Your (Cell) Fate: Stem Cells, iPSCs and the Future of Medicine’ session.’ Check out the BIO blog for the latest. I hope to speak with them, stay tuned! It’s raining off and on here, but I always forget how nice it is to see lots of trees.

SDBN’s May Event: Building a network and using your knowledge to advance your career and science

Want access to a network of tens of thousands of scientists who you can help you advance your career? Learn about your peers’ work in real time, and discuss it with them? We’ll spend part of the night covering LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, FriendFeed, and examples specific to life science and biotechnology during this networking event. We’ll introduce you to new resources and ideas which are revolutionizing science communication. This event will be customized to your needs: we’ll ask you what you want to learn about before (and even during!) this very interactive event. You’ll have time to ask questions and network throughout the event, and go home with resources and a plan to get a jump start with these exciting new tools. Sign up now to reserve your spot, and we’ll see you May 28th!

About the Presenters

Mary Canady began 20 years ago as a bench scientist in biochemistry and moved to the business side of biotechnology 10 years later, working at life science companies including Invitrogen and Calbiochem. In 2008 she founded Comprendia, a company specializing in helping biotechnology and life science companies grow through strategic marketing and business development. She recently started the San Diego Biotechnology Network (SDBN) a ‘2.0’ generation networking group, facilitating interactions through monthly events combined with online media such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs. (Mary’s LinkedIn Profile)

William Gunn did his doctoral studies at Tulane University on Bone Repair Using Human Multipotent Stromal Stem Cells. During his studies he explored social media and helped found the Friendfeed Life Scientists room, where over 700 scientists share information and collaborate to solve problems daily. He moved to San Diego in 2008 to pursue science and social media, and works for Genalyte developing molecular diagnostics assays. He also works with Mendeley, an academic reference management service, where he helps researchers leverage social media tools for collaboration and discovery.(William’s LinkedIn Profile)

Sponsored by

About Proven

PROVEN is an employee owned Consulting, Staffing and Solutions firm based in San Diego, CA. Our customer centric approach focuses on the needs of our clients and candidates. We provide flexible consulting and contingent staffing solutions in the areas of Scientific, Clinical, Information Technology, Engineering and Finance & Accounting on a direct-hire, contract-to-hire, and contract basis.

May Event Flyer (PDF)

Event Details
Who: Biotechnology professionals in the greater San Diego area
What:Social Media for Scientists: San Diego Biotechnology Network’s May Networking Event
When: Thursday, May 28th, 5:30-9:00 p.m.
Where: Tango Del Rey, 3567 Del Rey Street, San Diego 92109 (Directions below)
Cost: $20, including appetizers ($15 for Academics) +$5 at door
Contact: http://sdbn.org/contact
For more information about the event: http://sdbn.org/may

Directions: From the North: South on Interstate 5, Exit Balboa Ave, Straight to 4th Traffic Light then left on Bunker Hill St. Building directly ahead 3 blks. From the South: North on Interstate 5, Exit Grand/ Garnet Ave, Straight to 3rd Traffic Light then right on Bunker Hill St. Building directly ahead 3 blks.

We’ll have onsite registration at the event tonight, $30 ($20 for academics–please bring ID). We have 100 signed up and it’s going to be a great event. It starts at 5:30 and the networking session will begin at 6:30. PROVEN Scientific Staffing will be there, and they have just posted several jobs on the LinkedIn discussion. Directions to the event are on the flyer, we’ll see you there at 5:30!