San Diego is one of the principal peptide-industry hubs in the United States, anchored by Crinetics Pharmaceuticals (acromegaly, Cushing's, hypothalamic obesity programs from its San Diego headquarters), Bachem's Vista, California facility (scaling toward one-metric-ton peptide API production capacity), and a dense ecosystem of biotech startups across La Jolla and the broader region.
The city hosts the BIO International Convention each summer — June 22-25, 2026 at the San Diego Convention Center, drawing 20,000+ industry leaders across 130+ sessions. The convention is the year's largest deal-making and pipeline conference; the Insilico Medicine + SK Biopharmaceuticals $2.5B AI-driven neuroimmune drug discovery deal anchored the BIO 2026 opening day. The American Peptide Symposium and adjacent peptide-specific conferences periodically rotate through San Diego, and the city's biotech corridor is heavily represented in the FDA July 23-24 PCAC peptide compounding docket.
Stories tagged here cover BIO convention coverage, Crinetics and Bachem regional developments, and the broader San Diego peptide ecosystem. See [[bio-2026]], [[crinetics]], and [[bachem]] for adjacent threads.
The 2026 BIO International Convention closed Thursday June 25 at the San Diego Convention Center after four days, 20,000+ industry leaders in attendance, 130+ sessions across 18 focus areas, and a partnering-meeting volume that BIO sources said matched or exceeded prior-year records. Peptide-relevant headline deals across the convention week: the Insilico Medicine + SK Biopharmaceuticals $2.5 billion AI-neuroimmune drug discovery deal on Day 1 (June 22, $18M upfront + $670M per program in development and commercial milestones); BioArctic + Eli Lilly $800 million BrainTransporter blood-brain barrier delivery pact on Day 2 (June 23); STAT News' Day-3 BIO Readout column behind-the-scenes coverage of Eli Lilly's January Chai Discovery AI biologics partnership (June 24); and the disclosed Lilly-Astellas joint stalking-horse bid for Sangamo Therapeutics assets in bankruptcy (capsid delivery platform, zinc finger platform, modular integrase platform, prion disease program ST-506; Astellas takes Fabry disease asset isaralgagene civaparvovec). Fujifilm Life Sciences showcased a continuous electroporation gene delivery system and high-sensitivity in-line Raman measuring system at its Innovation Showcase. BIO 2027 returns to Boston June 7-10, 2027.
STAT News' June 24, 2026 BIO Readout column (Damian Garde, Allison DeAngelis) delivered behind-the-scenes detail on Eli Lilly's January 9, 2026 collaboration with AI startup Chai Discovery for biologics design, plus an update on the Lilly-Astellas joint bid for Sangamo Therapeutics assets in bankruptcy. The Chai Discovery deal deploys the company's Chai-2 zero-shot antibody design model (reportedly achieving double-digit experimental hit rates and full de novo design capability) plus a purpose-built generative AI model trained exclusively on proprietary Lilly data and tailored to Lilly's discovery workflows. Chai closed a $130 million Series B at $1.3 billion valuation in late 2025, eighteen months after launch. On the Sangamo front, Lilly is in line to acquire Sangamo's capsid delivery platform, zinc finger platform, modular integrase platform, and prion disease program ST-506 in the bankruptcy auction; Astellas is positioned to take Fabry disease asset isaralgagene civaparvovec. BIO 2026 runs June 22-25 at the San Diego Convention Center.
The BIO International Convention opens Monday June 22 in San Diego through Thursday June 25, drawing 20,000+ industry leaders across 130+ sessions in 18 focus areas — the year's largest peptide-and-biopharma deal-making and pipeline conference. Among the opening-day announcements: Insilico Medicine and SK Biopharmaceuticals will formally announce a research and development collaboration to discover AI-enabled innovative drug candidates in the neuroimmune CNS area, with Insilico eligible for up to $18M in upfront and near-term milestone payments and total potential deal value exceeding $2.5B including development, regulatory, and commercial milestones plus single-digit royalties. The pact sets a record for Insilico's APAC partnership totals. Industry watchers will track BIO 2026's deal-making cadence as the post-ADA / post-ENDO cycle concludes and the FDA PCAC peptide-compounding decision (July 23-24) becomes the next major regulatory catalyst.
The AACR Annual Meeting 2026 concluded April 22 in San Diego after six days featuring unprecedented peptide-oncology visibility. Macrocyclic peptide drug conjugate (PDC) pipelines across Circle Pharma, Bicycle Therapeutics, Oncopeptides, and SignaBlok drew regulatory and venture attention; peptide-targeting radioligand data from Perspective Therapeutics, Bicycle, and AlphaGen signaled maturation of the peptide-radioconjugate subcategory. AACR Advances sessions throughout the meeting featured targeted protein degradation and novel tumor-selective modalities, with peptide-based approaches competing directly with antibody drug conjugates in Phase 1/2 readouts.
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2026 opens April 17 at the San Diego Convention Center, running through April 22 with 9,500+ sessions, 575 clinical abstracts, 56 clinical trial plenary talks, and 393 late-breaking posters. Multiple peptide biotechs — including Bicycle Therapeutics, Circle Pharma, SignaBlok, and Oncolytics Biotech — are presenting new clinical and preclinical data on macrocyclic peptides, bicyclic peptide drug conjugates, and peptide-based immunotherapies.