Two Very Interesting Articles on Biotechnology by the Financial Times and Philippine Inquirer

Prudent Investor says: these are two interesting articles on biotechnology, one from a macro point of view and the other from the grassroots level. I have long shared the belief that biotechnology is one sector that the Philippines should benefit from considering the wealth of resources 'flora and fauna' and the educated stock of our labor sector. Imagine the latest Philippine ingenuity an invention which allows LIVE fishes to be transported waterless...through hibernation (???!!!) Wow!!! How radical!!

Financial Times: Failure to use science 'letting down world's poor', says UN
By David Firn and Fiona Harvey in London
Published: January 7 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 7 2005 02:00

Governments and development organisations are failing to exploit science and technology to alleviate poverty, United Nations experts cautioned yesterday.

Development experts told a conference in London that the failure to disseminate and benefit from scientific information threatened to derail the UN's millennium development goals.

However, some developing countries are fostering homegrown biotechnology industries in response to the lack of new drugs marketed for them by western pharmaceutical companies, according to a recent study.

Calestous Juma, professor of international development at Harvard University and author of a UN report on science, said: "We have seen with the challenges which Southeast Asia has faced ... that scientific and technical capabilities determine the ability to provide clean water, good health care, adequate infrastructure and safe food.

"The terrible devastation caused by the tsunamis last week raises the question of whether enough was invested in adopting existing technologies which could have reduced the scale of the disaster."

Developing countries are stepping into the breach opened by the dominant North American and European pharmaceutical industry and are becoming adept at importing technology to tackle their healthcare needs, said a three-year study by the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. Some of them have developed thriving export businesses in the sector.

Only 16 of the 1,393 new drugs marketed between 1975 and 1999 by western companies were for tropical and developing country diseases. The west accounts for 97 per cent of the biotechnology sector's $47bn (€36bn, £25bn) of annual revenues.

Developing countries such as Cuba, South Africa, Brazil, South Korea and China have now established thriving biotechnology industries making essential medicines.

Cuba's biotech sector is among the world's most successful, despite the country's poverty. Cuba produced the world's first synthetic vaccine against Haemophilus influenzae, the bacteria that causes meningitis-B. It exports biotechnology products to more than 50 countries, mainly in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia.

Abdallah Daar, who co-wrote the Toronto study, says developing countries need: a government with the political will and long-term vision to create a biotechnology industry; a niche untouched by established western industry; inspired individuals who can bring scientists, financiers, companies and politicians together; and a strong private sector.

"Unless you have a strong private sector that is interested in biotechnology, you can do a lot of research and it will go nowhere," he says.

Dr Daar says Cuba's biotechnology industry might not have succeeded if it had not been backed by Fidel Castro, who allowed vaccine development to be sheltered from the harsher anti-entrepreneurial aspects of the communist regime.

Halla Thorsteinsdóttir, who co-ordinated the study, says local health needs are the main source of creative thinking for the developing world's biotechnology sector.

Cuba's vaccine industry was prompted by efforts to stem an outbreak of meningitis in the mid-1980s. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the US trade embargo forced it to develop a homegrown solution that has since been licensed to US companies. South Korea and India also make and export biotech vaccines. Egypt manufactures recombinant insulin, and South Africa is developing an Aids vaccine.

"For these kinds of countries it is easy to import technology initially and then to become innovators," says Dr Daar. Biotechnology can thrive in countries with per capita income of $4,000 and good basic education infrastructure, the report says.

Sub-Saharan Africa risks falling ever further behind other developing countries, as they reach the required per capita income.

Dr Thorsteinsdóttir says that apart from South Africa, the region has failed to exploit biotechnology. But "south-south collaboration" can help it, she says.

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Philippine Daily Inquirer: Opportunities abound in RP biotechnology

Posted: 8:34 PM | Jan. 09, 2005
Dennis M. Arroyo
Inquirer News Service

SURPRISE. The Philippines is "one of the world's biologically richest countries," according to the Washington-based Conservation International.

In corals alone, the archipelago displays "the richest diversity of corals on the planet."

Charles Darwin saw the great diversity of life in the Galapagos islands, inspiring his work on evolution. But that doesn't compare with the Philippines.

Ecologist Dr. Lawrence R. Heaney, who did research at the Smithsonian Institution said, "it is reasonable to think of the Philippines as the Galapagos multiplied tenfold."

The nation is drawing scientists and pharmaceutical firms, for more than 70 percent of promising anti-cancer drugs come from rainforests like ours.

However, most Filipinos have yet to tap the wealth offered by such rich flora and fauna. They are ignoring the next big wave, biotechnology, a $250-billion industry fighting 200 diseases.

Pinoy snail bags $80M

Take for example the Philippine sea snail (Conus magus)--it has unleashed a bonanza for pharmaceutical giants. With the help of scientists from the University of the Philippines, Neurex, an American biotech firm, has isolated from the snail's venom a toxin called SNX-111.

This toxin paralyzes fish in seconds. It also interrupts pain signals that travel from the spinal cord to the brain. In fact scientists report that the toxin is 100 to 1,000 times more potent than morphine.

So Neurex turned SNX-111 into a painkiller, Ziconitide. Doctors administered it directly to the spinal cord via a small tube. In the first year that the product was marketed, it earned for Neurex $80 million.

It also saved the French pharmaceutical giant Elan from bankruptcy, as revealed in the article "Elan's $8 B turnaround" (Biocentury: the Bernstein Report on Biobusiness. Jan. 3, 2005).

Bonanza from 'ampalaya'

Another case, though less exotic, concerns the vegetables we call ampalaya and talong, or bitter gourd and eggplant.

According to diabetics experts Dr. Julie Cabato and Dr. Marcelino Salango, as cited in the Earth Times news service, both lower glucose levels in the blood.

The bitter truth is that the US National Institute of Health has acquired a US patent on ampalaya. In turn, the pharmaceutical company Cromak Research in New Jersey has produced an anti-diabetic diet supplement from the two veggies.

Cromak got the patent for the supplement, under US patent number 5900240. The company now caters to a market of 22 million American diabetics.

Seminar on bio opportunities

What other opportunities can Filipino business extract from biotech? They will be discussed in the first Philippine Biotechnology Venture Summit.

The conference at Makati will be held from Jan. 26 to 29, 2005. It is sponsored by the Philippine Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Mapua Institute of Technology, Makati.

The overview of biotech business opportunities covers fields like medicine, food, cosmetics, aquaculture, agriculture and industry. The talks will explain how to assess biotechnology business plans. Investors will learn about "judging the science without a PhD."

One of the speakers is coming in from the United Kingdom, an American expert, Prof. Amber Batata of Cambridge University. She got her PhD in health policy from Harvard. The summit will discuss the legal framework as well: biotech regulation in the local and international scene, intellectual property, and how biotech start-ups use regulations to their advantage. The conference features five PhD speakers.

Transporting live fish

Filipino biotech entrepreneurs will speak on their current work.

For example, live fish is very much in demand in restaurants around Asia. The problem though with exporting live fish is that the weight of the tank and the water adds greatly to transport costs. Bonifacio Comandante, who is pursuing his doctorate degree in marine biology, has invented a remedy.

His special solution puts the fish into hibernation.

"It was really a fish. And there was no water. And it was breathing!" the Inquirer (June 19, 2004) quoted Veneeth Iyengar, a US Peace Corps volunteer, who saw a demonstration of the technology.

The engineer likewise amazed Hong Kong businessmen with his trial shipments of the sleeping fish. The fish regain consciousness after nine hours.

"Let it be known in the fishing world that the Philippines has now developed a technology for waterless transport of live fish, a method that will revolutionize the way we normally handle fish after harvest," said then Agriculture Secretary Luis Lorenzo.

Comandante is waiting for the Philippine patent. Then he will go global with the franchise of his award-winning technology.

It's time that Filipinos profit from their own spectacular biological wealth.