Taiwan's first biotechnology show took place at the World Trade Center over the weekend, bringing together a wide range of products and services representing the country's growing biotech sector.
Stretched across 55 booths sat products ranging from nutrition drinks, herbal concoctions, home testing kits (such as blood and urine tests for pregnancy, AIDs, and drugs), to medical instruments, gene therapy products and biochips. One company even promoted a cure for cancer with pictures of tumor-infested mice healed through use of its drugs.
Despite signs of such snake oil treatments, there were companies promoting high-tech gear that should bring more interest to an industry projected to attract NT$37.5 billion (US$1.2 billion) in revenue to Taiwan by 2005, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Investment Programs Office (
Since most nations have outlawed the use of fetus material for genetic use, an alternative has come into use, umbilical cords and placentas.
Taiwan's Baby Bank (
"For example, certain diseases attack bone marrow," says Yang, "and usually a donor of similar genetic make-up must be found for a bone marrow transplant. But stem cells from when you were born could be used instead, and the body will not reject them because they have the same genetic blueprint." Bodily organs cloned from stem cells would be free from the risk of rejection for the same reason.
Yang places a high importance on using stem cells from birth, rather than those collected from adults because of vitality. Young stem cells multiply at a rate much faster than those gathered in later years. Cells from the average adult reproduce very slowly.
Even if an adult collected healthy stem cells now against possible future illnesses, the results would not be as favorable, and "you can't go back and do it," says Yang.
But it's not too late for new-borns, and the process "only takes five minutes with absolutely no harm to the mother or baby," says Yang. He believes the technique will become mainstream worldwide in the future, as it already has in Japan -- where it is compulsory.
For his own business, the Baby Bank plans to offer collection and cold storage for free up to the end of this year. After which customers will have to pay collection, storage and retrieval fees.
The first thing Yang Cheng-Fang (楊振芳) of Dr Chip Biotechnology Inc (晶宇) makes clear is that the chip is not like a semiconductor, there are no integrated circuits. Instead the biochip offered by this company is a simplified testing kit for Enterovirus 71, a deadly disease which claimed 64 victims during a 1998 outbreak in Taiwan.
An intestinal disease spread by direct contact with oral or nasal secretions, the enterovirus spreads fastest among children. There is no vaccine against this kindergarten killer.
But Yang says the biochip reduces the time needed to detect the virus from three days -- using traditional lab techniques -- to six hours. The device is a small, square, plastic chip. Place samples from an infected child into the chip and its four checkpoints tell doctors if enterovirus is present, as well as which strain.
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