Environment And Biotechnology To Be Big Draws At ACS

Legal and Regulatory Issues in Biotechnology On Monday, March 14, the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society will feature a day-long symposium on the legal aspects of chemistry and biotechnology. This session is jointly sponsored by the Division of Chemistry and the Law, the Biotechnology Secretariat, and the ACS Committee on Patents and Related Matters. Following is a list of topics to be covered in the symposium: Patenting -- why bother? Recent patent law developments involving biotechnology Resolution of inventorship disputes Trade secret protection for biotechnology inventions Key licensing issues from academic and corporate perspectives Current regulatory frame-work for biotechnology products Risk assessment for human gene therapy Deviance, due process, and the disestablishment of science Fuel, silk, sunscreens, clean air, law, and the job market are just a smattering of the wide variety of topics on the agenda at the 207th meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The national spring meeting, scheduled to run from March 13 to 17 in San Diego, will offer its 11,000-plus attendees more than 5,700 papers over 625 technical sessions sponsored by various divisions of the society. "Some of the `hot button' items have to do with environmental issues," says ACS president Ned Heindel, a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa. "One symposium titled `Benign by Design' has to do with retooling industrial processes chemically, so as to make the byproducts less polluting and more `green.' "There will also be a session on oxygenates--gasoline additives [added to reduce lead] that have come under a lot of fire lately because of their believed health hazards." Scheduled at the conference is a presentation dealing with the health implications of oxygenates and a discussion of some recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency that report insufficient evidence to support claims of any health risk. Given the uncertain climate surrounding the job market for chemists (B. Spector, The Scientist, Nov. 15, 1993, page 1), professional development and employment will receive a lot of attention this year. "There is a bevy of activities for chemists searching for jobs," says Heindel. "The job market is quite obviously sour now, but I see very little difficulty in placing people with environmental and analytical backgrounds and people in process research. "There is an increased amount of temporary and contract employment, particularly by the larger companies like Merck and Kodak," says Heindel, referring to Rahway, N.J.-based Merck & Co. Inc., and Eastman Kodak Co. of Rochester N.Y., which were major employers of chemists in the past. "One bright spot in the employment scene are the start-up companies," he adds. "We at ACS are trying to identify the high-tech firms with less than 30 employees and make them aware of the employment services we have to offer." The employment services include a clearinghouse of names of professional chemists and a job database for ACS members. Another subject to receive extensive coverage at the 1994 conference is biotechnology, the focus of about 175 papers in 28 different symposia sponsored by the biotechnology secretariat. An ACS secretariat is a group of symposia encompassing talks from several different divisions that pertain to some common thematic material. Polymer chemistry, the law, biosensors, and the environment are just a sample of the topics that will be covered in the symposia of the biotechnology secretariat. "The theme is the industrial applications of biotechnology," says Charles G. Gebelein, one of the chairmen of the biotechnology secretariat this year and an adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. "Based on past performances, I expect that the session on legal aspects will be a big one," predicts Gebelein, who also holds an emeritus professorship at Youngstown State University in Ohio. Patrick Turley, cochairman and moderator for the symposium titled "Legal and Regulatory Issues in Biotechnology," explains that the popularity of this session is due to the growth of the biotechnology industry. "With so many cutbacks, people are increasingly looking to their intellectual property as a primary source of funding. They are thus interested in issues such as patents, for example," says Turley, a patent attorney with the Houston- based law firm of Baker and Botts. "Also, biotechnology has moved from the realm of basic research into that of actual products, which raises interest in FDA licensing," another topic to be covered in the day-long session (see story on page 8). "Personally, I would like to see more people at the sessions on biotechnological polymers," says Gebelein, whose area of expertise is polymer chemistry. "There is a tremendous amount of good information about the uses of proteins from rather unusual sources--spider silks, for example. Another intriguing one is melanin, whose polymers are being used in sunscreening agents to protect against the sun's radiation." One of the presentations at this session will be by Joseph Cappello, director of polymer research at Protein Polymer Technologies Inc., a biotechnology company in San Diego. Cappello will be talking about the potential uses of a synthetic polymer being developed by his company that contains blocks of commercial silk in its structure. "Silk is a very robust protein, and the addition of these blocks gives our protein high strength and the ability to withstand very high temperatures of 180 to 200 degrees [Celsius]," he explains. He anticipates that the synthetic polymers will have applications in surgical repair, particularly in cases of abdominal and gynecological surgery. Ideally, surgical material would prevent tissues from sticking to one another during the healing process, but disappear eventually. Currently used materials do not disappear and can thus cause other complications in the body. "We are trying to produce a resorbable material that will last for a predetermined time in the body," says Cappello. The symposium on industrially important biotechnological polymers is scheduled to run over two days, Tuesday, March 15 and Wednesday, March 16. Complete details on all the technical sessions, expositions, and workshops are published in the February 7 issue of Chemical and Engineering News.

Environment And Biotechnology To Be Big Draws At ACS

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