Business of Being at BIO

Its been a while since I attended the BIO conference, this year held in Boston. I’d forgotten how key a feature the speed dating booths are to the success of many attendees time at the event. Post pandemic these booths were figuratively bursting at the seams with energetic conversation.

To follow-up an alliance dialogue with Scott Ripley, general manager of Nucleic Acids at Cytiva, I stopped by their booth. Having missed Scott, who took a flight home already, I wound up talking with their commercial lead Fiona Fitzgerald. As a consequence Fiona attended the Alliance for mRNA Medicines (AMM) soft launch reception, which consisted of very high level industry leaders participating in support of this Alliance, https://mrnamedicines.org/.

Cytiva then expressed interest in not only learning more about AMM, but learning more about the wider therapeutic application mRNA is now being turned toward. In return I wound up learning a good deal more about Cytiva’s nucleic acid group and what their future plans pivot around. The newly formed nucleic acids team at Cytiva supports customers throughout the manufacturing workflow for oligonucleotides and purification of mRNA drug substances. In collaboration with their colleagues at Precision Nanosystems, they help bring mRNA lipid nanoparticle therapeutics to market.