The nation's biotechnology companies should play to the nation's strengths as a gateway to Asia and a producer of information-technology products, a visiting US expert on the biotech sector said yesterday.
"The world is interested in using Taiwan as a vehicle to access this part of the world," said Steve Burrill, author of a yearly industry report on biotechnology and CEO of Burrill & Company, a Silicon Valley-based investment firm.
His company is in town to raise money for a US$250 million fund to add to the US$350 million biotechnology fund it already runs. The company will also visit Taiwanese biotech start-ups in which it may want to invest.
"Taiwan might be good at integrating electronics for use in biotechnology," he said. He predicted that diagnostics, which involve detecting illnesses or health problems, will become a key sector of the biotech industry. Many diagnostic devices will be made of electronics similar to the ones Taiwan mass produces today.
DigitalGene Biosciences Co (
"I was very happy when he brought up diagnostics," said Eddy Hsieh (
Hsieh's company is developing a Personal Digital Biochip System (PDBS), an electronic device the size of a Palm Pilot with a slot to insert bio-chips for disease detection and health analysis. The company has already made a prototype of the device.
Burrill said the big difference between laboratories now and 30 years ago is computers. When he first stepped into a lab, he said, it was full of beakers and Bunsen burners. Now, some labs only have computers.
But the development of a biotech industry has nothing to do with the pharmaceutical business, Burrill said.
"The biotech industry grew up where academic excellence exists," he said.
In the US, the most famous clusters of biotech firms grew up near academic centers such as the MIT-Harvard corridor in Boston and in Silicon Valley, close to Stanford University and UC-Berkeley, rather than near big pharmaceutical companies.
In Taiwan, universities and academic centers vie for limited government funds with pharmaceutical manufacturers, which often have antiquated facilities and little real R&D.
Food companies that sell nutritional products also compete for funds meant for the biotech industry. One example is Digital Triangle Biotech, which sells bottled water in convenience stores.
Burrill said that an active and willing capital market would be vital to the development of the biotech industry. Biotech firms need heavy investments, as the development of a drug can take up to 15 years and cost as much as US$800 million.
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