This year's BIO CEO & Investor Conference 2002, held at New York's Waldorf=Astoria in February, drew more than 16,000 analysts, pharma and biotech executives, and financial media, its largest audience to date.

Company presentations, break-out sessions, panel discussions, and CEO roundtables addressed hot industry topics including Big Pharma's changing view of biotech and its trend toward finding and licensing late-stage products.

Actor and stem cell research activist Christopher Reeve spoke at the panel session "Cloning and Stem Cells: Public Policy and the Promise of Regenerative Medicine," alongside Tom Okarma, CEO for Geron, which owns the "Dolly, the sheep" cloning patents. Other notable speakers included Michael Waldholz, Pulitzer prize-winning medical reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Waldholtz focused his keynote presentation on how biotechs must promote themselves responsibly to the media, using the ImClone case as an example of what not to do.