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The biotechnology industry tends to be overshadowed by the razzle-dazzle of high-tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google, particularly in the Bay Area.
Now, though, the biotech business is experiencing an almost unprecedented boom of its own. Money is flowing into the industry as never before. Stock prices are high, and drug approvals are up. And perhaps most important, some of the new drugs represent major advances against diseases like cancer, hepatitis C and cystic fibrosis.
Buoyed by the recent success, some executives and investors are making the bold assertion that the industry has turned a corner and that improved scientific insights and new techniques are allowing drug developers to reduce their notoriously high failure rate and to take on some illnesses for the first time.
Others are skeptical, saying that the current boom is a bubble that will burst.
That mix of exuberance and anxiety characterized the J. P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the industry’s most closely watched investor event, for which 9,000 executives and investors squeezed into the Westin St. Francis hotel here last week...