Led by the state Commerce Department, they'll be among more than 18,000 attendees from 60 countries -- including biotech executives, scientists, financiers, legal experts and competing industry hunters -- at the sector's biggest annual trade show.

The four-day BIO 2004, sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, starts Sunday.

While various South Carolina organizations have attended BIO conventions in the past, they have never traveled as a unified front.

This year, instead of occupying individual booths scattered around the convention hall, the statewide contingent will be housed within the "South Carolina Pavilion," near the Germany, Illinois and Louisiana exhibits.

The group includes officials from the state's major research universities, the technical college system, Santee Cooper, South Carolina Electric & Gas, Charleston County, the Charleston Regional Development Alliance and other industrial recruitment agencies from around South Carolina. While neither Gov. Mark Sanford nor Commerce Secretary Bob Faith will make the trip, representatives of the administration will be present.

The statewide cooperation and coordination is unprecedented, said David T. Ginn, president and chief executive of the Charleston Regional Development Alliance. "We just haven't thought that way before," he said.

"I hope to see us do more things together like this for other industry sectors and not just look so parochial," added Ginn, who is sending a senior staffer to the conference.

The main goal of the BIO 2004 trip is twofold, said Jessica Daly, marketing manager at the Commerce Department.

"We want to be seen as a potential biotech location. We want to get the message out that we have advantages," she said.

One of the major talking points this year will be the state's newly passed venture capital fund and Life Sciences Act, which provides financial incentives for technology companies and research facilities.

Also, the Commerce Department will be unveiling a new marketing campaign that centers around the lifestyles, education, infrastructure, capital and people in South Carolina.

"This is the first big external push on that," Daly said.

Information packets will provide supporting statistics and upbeat information about South Carolina to help change outside perceptions -- "the good news, the good stories about how we're working together as a state," Daly said.

The state hopes to entice wandering conventioneers to its pavilion by raffling off a privately funded free trip to Charleston, but it won't be playing host to any swanky VIP parties or other special events, as states such as Florida are, she said. To keep costs to a minimum, attendees are doubling up at the off-site Westin St. Francis hotel, Daly said.

"We felt that what we're doing was a big step up this year from previous years," she said of the state's pavilion, which is costing the seven primary participants $9,000 each. "Maybe next year, we'll add another component."

Biotech, one of the hottest yet most uncertain corners of the life-sciences industry, uses cell research to create new drugs, engineer better crops and develop other breakthroughs.

South Carolina, like most other states, has been targeting the high-paying sector and other so-called knowledge-based businesses to shore up lost jobs, boost income levels and generate more tax revenue.

Yet the biotech business is a risky, high-stakes game. Over the past quarter century, investors have lost about $40 billion of the $100 billion that they bet on the industry's publicly traded companies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

To date, the state has seen mixed results in its efforts to develop a biotech base. Two companies that moved to the Charleston region, Pilot Therapeutics Holdings and CropTech, ceased operations last year shortly after being wooed away from North Carolina and Virginia, respectively, with hefty incentives packages.

On the other hand, Upstate biomedical firm Poly-Med Inc. said last month it will create 25 new jobs and invest several million dollars in its existing and future facilities in Clemson Research Park. And locally based Argolyn Bioscience Inc. recently received a fresh $1.4 million round of venture capital funding.

The industry also is tiny, employing roughly 200,000 workers nationwide. Most of the 30,000 new biotech jobs that are expected to be created this year will probably go to established biotech centers such as California and Massachusetts.

"My feeling is that if you don't have a biotech industry already, it isn't going to happen," Scott Morrison, an analyst with Ernst & Young in Palo Alto, Calif., said in a recently published news article about the BIO 2004 gathering.

Joel Marcus, chief executive of Pasadena, Calif.-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a leading biotech property consultant, disagreed. He used Phoenix as a prime example of what regions that historically have not been considered biotech magnets can do to improve their competitiveness. The Arizona city has invested tens of millions of dollars in its efforts and has recruited industry movers and shakers to build credibility.

The other key ingredient is "cooperation and getting everybody on the same page, as opposed to every institution wanting to protect their turf," said Marcus, who is a scheduled speaker at BIO 2004. "That's what we've seen to be the most successful model so far."

Heyward Horton hopes Marcus is right. The San Francisco trade show is the third for Horton, a veteran project manager with the Charleston Regional Development who attended past BIO conventions in Toronto and Washington, D.C.

"The Bay Area is certainly a hotbed of biotech companies," he said. "I do have a couple of side appointments outside of the show."

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