Monday's Dinner and Keynote Address

Jerry Zaro, Chief of Economic Growth for New Jersey, opened his remarks by extolling the many virtues of the Garden State: the state has a large labor pool, excellent public and private schools – and unlike many other states, New Jersey has a “brain GAIN.”

The state also has a program that will return between 10 – 80% of payroll taxes back to companies doing business in NJ. Other state programs include an angel fund to encourage venture capital in the state – and businesses receiving money from the fun d can keep their profits without paying New Jersey state tax.

Celgene , said Zaro, is a great examples of a business that benefited from New Jersey’s programs and policies.

Our keynote speaker was the President & COO of Celgene, Robert Hugin. Hugin served the US as a Marine. Tomorrow is Veterans’ Day – I’d like to thank Hugin and every other veteran of our country’s armed services for his or her service.

10 years ago, when Hugin joined Celgene, the company had 6 weeks of operating cash on hand. Today, Celgene has operations in 40 countries, multiple cancer drugs, a deep and diverse pipeline for future drugs, and have invested nearly 40% of their revenue back into R&D. This year, Celgene will have $2-2.25 B in revenue. The Celgene story is about survival.

The company changed course many times before it got to where it is today. Hugin’s advice to other biotech companies is to:

• Constantly challenge your business model and make sure you’re going in the direction you want.
• Guard your IP and share it at your own peril – partner at the last minute. Celgene has succeeded because they own their products worldwide.
• Recruit exceptional people and set aspirational goals. No matter how big or how diverse you get, you have to maintain the feeling of individual ownership and entrepreneurship.
• You have to take and manage risk for every aspect of the company. Great things don’t happen to companies who don’t take great risks. You’ve got to take risks if you want great returns.
• Size matters. We believe there are tremendous disadvantages to large organizations. When you get too big, you don’t get great results.

Hugin believes the biotech industry must make strides to reform the health care system. The US spends over $2 trillion a year in healthcare, a number that accounts for nearly 20% of GDP – these numbers are not sustainable. The pharmaceutical industry can’t allow others to shape the debate – it must get involved. 95% of Americans want their country to be the global leader in medical research. The cancer death rate has decreased by 2% per year this decade – double the rate for the previous decade. If we invested in better diagnostics, we could reduce cancer treatment costs by 40%.

Employees must be ambassadors for improvements in healthcare. If they don’t believe we can cut cost and improve care, it will never work and we will never succeed.

By Danielle Kozich on behalf of Pennsylvania Bio

I apologize if there are any errors in this post; I am a layperson and many of these terms are out of my field of expertise.