We didn’t get to travel to this year’s JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, but Pharm Exec contributor Audrey S. Erbes (founder of Erbes & Associates) did. Here are her impressions:

There was a lack of usual excitement among drug companies but no sense of distress.

Although this year’s event broke attendance records with more than 7,700 participants and 331 company presentations, the “buzz” was definitely missing, as the drug companies faced the fact that investment interest has switched to other, less risky life science sectors. Sector executives seemed resigned to the task of rebuilding confidence in their sector and their respective companies in the face of growing financial, regulatory, and reimbursement challenges.

While Big Pharma speakers addressed the need to get their financial house in order to handle inadequate pipelines and loss of blockbuster profit, startups confessed they were finding it difficult to interest traditional investors in funding the high-risk development of new platforms and drug candidates. Even the Big Biotech companies, including Genentech, were evidencing some discomfort.

Big Pharma companies were repositioning themselves as biological product companies. Wyeth made a big point about biologics accounting for over 35 percent of the firm’s revenues. AstraZeneca chose to fill its time slot with a presentation by recently acquired MedImmune and its biotech-focused story. Genentech speakers talked about a slowing momentum in 2007 after the high growth 2004 to 2006 period; they were on the defensive as they faced questions about their distribution of Avastin to compounding pharmacies and the progress of other Avastin indications. CEO Levinson’s presentation was unusually science heavy, even for him, as he redirected the audience to the promise of Genentech’s pipeline in near future years. The Medicis CEO didn’t even use slides for his presentation, rather speaking plainly about the state of the company and its venture into riskier areas with more money invested in research compared with the past.

And as for exciting news of breakthroughs in science and technology—there wasn’t any. There was more talk about the potential putative impact of changing government reimbursement policies and regulations than about technologies or rising-star companies.

The session hallways of the venerable St. Francis hotel lacked the traditional crush of the high number of attendees due to the numerous events occurring outside the hotel and attendence at the record number of 4,800 JPMorgan one-on-one investor meetings located on upper hotel floors. VCs were active at other hotels screening potential investments back-to-back all day. You couldn’t enter a hotel near the St. Francis without running into ancillary industry meetings and social affairs. Even the Monday-night cocktail party sponsored by JPMorgan was noticeably low on attendance as the major banks and equity funds wined and dined attendees across the city at competing affairs.

Many presentations from the conference are available online for the next few months.