India's Bangalore
Karnataka, whose capital is Bangalore, has 72 biotechnology companies employing around 3,500 scientists. Eleven new firms started the previous year. The bulk of the new investment would come from Europe's second largest drugmaker AstraZeneca , which will invest one billion rupees, while Aurigene Discovery Technologies, a unit of New York Stock Exchange-listed Indian drug maker Dr Reddy's Laboratories plans to invest 500 million. But a good deal of Bangalore's ambition to build homegrown companies rests on infant start-ups that mainly focus on contract research for global corporations, or combine software skills with biotechnology to tap the emerging field of bioinformatics.
Singapore's 'Biopolis'
Singapore, whose economy is reeling from a slump in technology exports is moving into biotechnology in a big way. It wants to build the research expertise needed to position itself as the life science "hub" for South-East Asia in order to support the development of a lucrative biomedical/pharmaceutical industry. It is constructing a 'Biopolis', an 18 million square foot biomedical sciences hub housing public research institutes, corporate research and development centres and start-ups - due to be completed. In addition, a Biomedical Research Council is to be established and a Biomedical Grid, a high-security network enabling the biomedical research information to be shared and distributed between interested parties. To make up for the lack of home-grown expertise, it has recruited foreign talents, including Dr Edison Liu, Director of the US national Cancer Institute's Division of Clinical Sciences, and Alan Colman from PPL Therapeutics, the Scottish company that helped create Dolly the world's first cloned sheep.
Singapore has around 30 life science start-ups. Around half working in the biomedical sphere and half in agriculture and environmental sphere. The country has attracted some pharmaceutical giants. Eli Lilly is spending US 140 million on research over the next five years and Novartis is spending US£119million over five to 10 years.
China's interest in agribio
China is developing the largest plant biotechnology capacity outside North America, according to a report in Science. esearch in agbiotech in China began in the mid-1980s. A research programme on rice functional genomics was started in 1997. Fifty plant species and more than 120 functional genes are now used in plant genetic engineering. Government funding predominates. Plant biotech funding increased eight-fold from 1986 to 1999. The total budget is estimated to be $112 million. About 9.2 per cent of the national crop research budget was allocated to plant biotech in 1999, up from 1.2 per cent in 1986, far exceeding the 2 to 5 per cent level of other developing countries. India's budget is about 20 per cent that of China, China accounts for more than half of the developing world's expenditures on plant biotech. But it is less than 5 per cent of the total annual expenditure in industrialised countries, estimated to be about $2 to $3 billion, 45 per cent of which is public.
Thus, China supports more than 10 per cent of publicly funded agbiotech. In early 2001, China announced plans to raise plant biotech research budgets by 400 per cent before 2005. If that is achieved, it could account for nearly one-third of the world's public plant biotech expenditure.
Malaysia's 'Bio-Valley'
Malaysia too, sees biotechnology as one of the five core technologies that will transform it into a highly industrialised nation by 2020, and is investing up to 4 billion RM (about £800 million) on a 'Bio-Valley'. A National Biotechnology Directorate (BIOTEK), headed by Dr Abdul Latiff Ibrahim, was established in 1996 to promote and coordinate biotech R& D activities in the country, and to encourage private-public sector participation in the national biotechnology programme. Dr Ibrahim has said publicly that the Malaysian government would at least match the billions of dollars that Singapore plans to invest in providing world-class research facilities for companies.
He hopes to secure between US $10 billion and US $12.2 billion worth of investment from companies in the are within the next 8 to 10 years. At the 1st National Conference on Life Sciences held in Selangor, Malaysia's Minister of Health told the delegates that the 21st century is the "century of life sciences", when scientists will look to the "internal universe of life itself instead of outer space". The "thousands of meters of blood and nerves" could be the source of "untold wealth" and "untold possibilities". Dr Ibrahim gave a sketch of the Bio-Valley project, complete with artist's impression. It would be built on a lake, with three National Institutes of Biotechnology, for Agricultural biotechnology, Genomics and Pharmaceuticals respectively. ". There would also be a special institution to look after intellectual property rights and financial exploitation. And most importantly, luxury lake-side housing for scientists to attract the best.
- (Sources: Reuters Business,Business on Line Special Report; Science Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment, Malaysia)