Cool idea: People with money invite startup companies from their own state to tell their stories. Companies from all over the state of Virginia were asked to submit applications to be considered for review at the conference. Four of the biotech ones that got picked have some pretty exciting ideas:

• REDEEM THE EARTH – plant-based environmental solutions for helping land (in manufacturing sites, mines, agricultural land, and firing ranges) recover from various poisoning agents;
• NON-INVASIVE TARGETING – ways of delivering drugs that are molecular (meaning biological) and use ultrasound (imaging with sound waves) so doctors can target therapies to specific sites (we’re trying to locate these guys because this description needs further clarification);
• KEEP BETTER TRACK OF DRUGS – a system for tracking drugs that combines a database of up-to-date drug product, packaging and legal information with a sensor that authenticates drug products throughout their life cycle (from manufacture to sale) without destroying them; and
• PHYSICAL HELP FOR ADDICTION – therapies to help reduce addicts’ dependencies on drugs and alcohol.

The Virginia Biotechnology Association, a 200-member statewide trade group that “promotes the impact” of the life sciences on the local economy, is hosting the event. Trade associations are common for other kinds of businesses. Why not for biomed/tech? Maybe this kind of organization would have more wollop than an unrelated group that’s given a mandate to do something for bioscience. After all, trade association members are business owners with a lot more to lose–and to gain–from how their industry is accepted, understood and promoted than people who have no heart-felt stake in the outcome, but rather whose main job may be about proving how “plugged in” they are…