Philadelphia, PAPhiladelphia, PA – June 23, 2014....Philadelphia will be everywhere at the 2014 BIO International Convention (BIO), June 23-26, being held at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA. BIO is the largest gathering of the biotechnology industry and Philadelphia will be the 2015 host city. As the destination for BIO 2015, representatives from Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will be on-site in San Diego to drum up excitement for next year's meeting, with the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau (PHLCVB) hosting a destination promotion booth. Last in Philadelphia in 2005, the convention is expected to have an economic impact of $40 million, with more than 15,000 attendees from across the world traveling to Philadelphia.

“The 2005 BIO convention in Philadelphia broke attendance records and with the large Pennsylvania and Philadelphia presence in San Diego this year, we are looking to make BIO 2015 one of the best attended,” said Bonnie Grant, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Life Sciences Congress (PHLLife).

The entire tri-state region will be engaged in promoting Philadelphia as next year's host city with New Jersey and Delaware also touting the city's many assets at BIO 2014. A special Pennsylvania Pavilion in San Diego will host members of Pennsylvania Bio, the state trade association for the life sciences industry and PHLLife, a division of the PHLCVB who will be distributing multi-colored slap watches (photo attached) to attendees proclaiming that it is “Time for BIO”. Other companies with a presence in the Pennsylvania Pavilion include Almac, Auxilium, BTG International Inc., Fisher Scientific, FlowMetric, Frontage, BioAdvance, Life Sciences Greenhouses of Pennsylvania, Immunomic Therapeutics, IPS, Janssen Biotech Inc., Novasep,  Penn State University Milton S. Hershey College of Medicine, TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals, TEVA, University City Science Center and University of Pittsburgh.

The Greater Philadelphia region is home to many of the world's largest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and is an ideal location to attract the life sciences industry. Life sciences-related conventions comprise more than half of all meetings and conventions held in Philadelphia each year. The biotechnology industry is of critical importance to the Pennsylvania Convention Center because of the region's assets in healthcare and biotech development. BIO represents more than 1,100 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other nations.  BIO members are involved in the research and development of innovative healthcare, agricultural as well as industrial and environmental biotechnology products.

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