Biomedical Principals Form 2 Groups

With an eye to the future, leaders of Orange County’s biotechnology, biomedical and biopharmaceutical industries are banding together, counting on two new organizations to foster further growth in those industries.

The newly formed Orange County Biomedical Industry Council, or BMIC, and the Orange County BioCommerce Assn., or BioCom, are patterned after similar organizations in San Diego, Southern California’s center for the biomedical industry.

But Dan Kopolinski, chief executive of Irvine-based biomedical firm CoCensys and founding chairman of BMIC, said that Orange County’s time has come in the field of biomedicine.

“We missed the first wave,” Kopolinski said. “There’s no question about it. But there is a second and third wave coming and we have the opportunity to be a big part of it.”

BMIC membership consists of industry executives, while BioCom consists of “support service groups,” such as venture capitalists, bankers, accountants and legal firms, Kopolinski said.

The organizations support a concept by Walter Henry, dean of UC Irvine’s College of Medicine, to create a medical industrial park at the university.