Plan your JPM Week with BIO

It’s not too early to start thinking about your 2024 networking and business development opportunities—learn more about BIO’s JPM Events Guide app and an opportunity for early-stage startups to get support. Plus, BIO recently urged the President’s Export Council (PEC) to take action on agricultural exports. (544 words, 2 minutes, 43 seconds)

Plan your JPM Week with BIO’s Events Guide app

BIO is collaborating on an events app to supplement our partnering app and ensure a full experience during January’s “JPM Week.”

Why it matters: Every January, J.P. Morgan brings biotech and pharma leaders to San Francisco for one of the premier industry networking events. Major deals driving biopharma innovation are launched, forwarded, or clinched at JPM Week.

About the app: BIO collaborated with Novateur Ventures, a global life sciences advisory company, to develop the JPM Events Guide app to help you find networking and educational events during JPM.

Why you want it: “There are hundreds of networking events, conferences, and presentations happening all over San Francisco during JPM Week, and the information about these opportunities is largely dispersed,” BIO VP Mackensie Vernetti told Bio.News. “Guide to JPM‘24 brings all of that important data all in one place, and in a convenient mobile app that greatly simplifies of-the-moment navigation.”

Hosting an event? BIO and Novateur welcome all organizations and companies planning events or receptions during JPM Week to submit events here.

Want to find an event?Click here to download the app.

And don’t forget partnering! BIO continues to offer BIO Partnering @JPM Week—learn more at Bio.News.

BIO urges action on agricultural exports

BIO and 34 other organizations wrote the President’s Export Council (PEC) last week urging action on agricultural trade, and the PEC conveyed those concerns in writing to President Biden.

What BIO wants: The letter to the PEC, the principal national advisory committee on international trade, listed recommendations to expand market opportunities, reduce trade barriers, and address sustainability.

Recommendations include…

• Enforce existing trade agreements—by strengthening the World Trade Organization dispute resolution process and enforcing all free trade agreements.
• Lead on international sustainability and climate efforts—by supporting climate-smart agricultural practices that include biotech solutions.
• Increase collaboration to diversify the agriculture supply chain for inputs like fertilizers.
• Establish a robust agricultural trade agenda to remove tariffs and other barriers and open up more markets for American goods.

And we have to deal with Mexico. The letter mentioned the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which Mexico has violated with its plan to ban U.S. biotech corn. A panel is expected to rule in that dispute in mid-2024.

Why it matters: U.S. agriculture exports fell 16% in volume this year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts a food and agriculture trade deficit of $17 billion, “a stark contrast to the United States’ historical trade surplus in agricultural exports, averaging $12.5 billion over the past ten years,” says the letter.

Are you a life science entrepreneur ready to build and hone your business model, product development plan, and commercialization strategy? Are you gearing up for pre-seed, seed, or Series A funding?

California Life Sciences can help. CLS is accepting applications for the spring 2024 cohort of its bi-annual 12-week advisory program, FAST California, for early-stage startups creating disruptive technologies with high medical impact.

The deadline to apply is January 6, 2024—click here to learn more and apply.

President Biden’s Wednesday: Hosting the White House Tribal Nations Summit at the Department of the Interior in Washington. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will participate virtually after testing positive for COVID, says Indianz.com.

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: The House Energy & Commerce Committee markup of 44 pieces of legislation will continue, with health-related legislation, including some targeting pharmacy benefit manager reform, possibly taken up today.