PHILADELPHIA - The Pennsylvania Convention Center was constructed around the Reading Terminal Headhouse, which was the nerve center for the Reading Railroad and also served as passenger station when it opened in 1893.

It seems fitting that what was once the brain trust for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Co. is home to BIO 2005: The industry these days is a lot like a train, barreling around the world, smoke pouring from the stacks, dropping off biotechnology to increasingly farther reaches.

The day started gray here but by mid-morning the sun had broken up the clouds and the temperature rose to the mid-70s - comfortable weather for the estimated 17,067 attendees and the legions of dark wool suits.

Those registrants filed into the breakfast session to fuel up and listen to a panel titled "25 Years of Healing - Turning Science Into Solutions." Moderator Morton Kondracke, journalist, Fox News contributor, author and a television co-host, led the participants through a discussion on the 25th anniversary of the Bayh-Dole Act, legislature that allowed for technology transfer to small businesses, and which has had a particularly strong impact on the biotech sector.

Sitting on the panel was Sen. Birch Bayh, the force behind the act; Donald Drakeman, president, CEO and director of Medarex Inc.; Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania; James Mullen, CEO of Biogen Idec Inc.; and Roger Perlmutter, executive vice president, research and development at Amgen Inc.

It's not just luck that the rise of the biotech industry in the U.S. coincided with the passing of the Bayh-Dole Act, and it's a big reason why 75 percent of all biotech is found within the borders of the U.S. The act makes it easier to take academic discoveries and make them commercially viable. Although biotech as a science can be found in Western Europe, Japan and beyond, sometimes science isn't enough.

"They don't have it," said Mullen, referring to a similar rule abroad.

Perhaps they don't, but biotech is on a global march - the exhibit hall makes that abundantly clear. There are representatives from 61 countries expected, with more than 6,000 ex-U.S. attendees. That means that while the language of biotech continues to be English, there's a good chance that the person requesting to have the salad passed his way at lunch or politely asking the location of meeting room 306 will do so with an accent.

In today's economy, everyone wants the financial rewards that a flourishing biotech community can provide, and a map of the exhibit hall reads like a world atlas. The locals are here - New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, which hosts a pavilion that stretches for seven aisles - but there are exhibitors from all over: New Zealand, Singapore, Korea, Spain, Italy, Malaysia, India, Ireland, just to name a few.

Nebraska also is here, with a booth proudly stating that "Bio's HOT in Nebraska."

But is biotechnology hot? BioWorld's stock tracker has the industry down 18.3 percent since Jan. 1. The sector has raised nearly 20 percent less in total funding than it had at this point last year, and biotech IPOs are wriggling through the window for an unsatisfying average take of just more than $50 million. It's getting harder for young biotechs to pull in venture capital funding and the skepticism that fell over pharma in 2005 has reached biotech, helped by the withdrawal from the market of Biogen Idec's Tysabri.

That doesn't sound particularly hot. So perhaps BIO couldn't have come at a better time. The BIO conference tends to have an uplifting effect on the masses - standing in the exhibit hall, taking in the business pitches and the grandiose pavilions, watching attendees play air hockey at the BiotecCanada booth under the Canadian pavilion or cheering for the lead car on Quintiles Transnational's electric race track, it's hard not to feel good.

Throw in new BIO President Jim Greenwood's patient-focused plenary luncheon presentation, given over the gentle clatter of cutlery, and that good feeling spreads. Perhaps that's one of the most important aspects of the BIO conference - beyond the all-important networking, it has an ability to remind attendees that regardless of what investors think, this industry is important, this industry benefits mankind, this industry saves lives.