The Award was presented to Governor Christie at a special ceremony at the State House in Trenton joined by BIO Board Member and Celgene Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer Perry A. Karsen and BIO Vice President for Alliance Development and State Government Relations Fritz Bittenbender.
In nominating the Governor, BioNJ cited his leadership in promoting a better business environment for all businesses in New Jersey, his support of the Technology Business Tax Certificate Transfer Program, the doubling of the R&D Tax Credit and the naming of BioNJ to administer the Life Science Talent Network. His support of the biotechnology industry, along with that of Lt. Kim Guadagno builds on a long tradition of State Government support that has helped to make New Jersey one of the leading bioclusters in the world.
The BIO conference will hit Boston’s convention center on Monday, with 4,000 companies and 15,000 attendees. While many of the biggest drug names in New Jersey, like Merck and Co., really are pharmaceutical companies, not biotechs, the BIO organization decided in favor of Christie. It could be that New Jersey has seen a massive of jobs over the past few years as big pharma’s blockbuster drugs go off patent. This starts to make biotech even more appealing.
Christie will be in chowdah-town next week spending time in the state’s pavilion, which is designed to lure new companies to the state.
At least Chistie has shown that he can be the bigger man.
