Taipei Times: With all the media hype over biotechnology in Taiwan, what actual advances did the sector make last year?
David Silver: Biotechnology has been hot in Taiwan for several years, and in the past two or three in particular, there's been a lot of government attention to it. Last year there was a consolidation of planning and some regulatory advances. The laws have been defined more clearly, there have been some more solid pledges to develop biotech clusters and science parks and more international conferences. So overall there's been progress.
In terms of actual advances, there haven't been any big blockbuster drugs but there have been some interesting transgenic animals developed. For example, the Animal Technology Institute of Taiwan developed the world's first transgenic pig, a cloned pig with a human gene inside.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
The pig produces milk that can be purified to produce a human protein, which can be used as a blood-clotting agent for hemophiliacs. That's a world's first and they're working on more.
Another significant event last year was the decoding of the rice genome -- Taiwan played a big part in doing that. The rice genome decoding center, a decoding research branch, was set up at Academia Sinica. In addition, ITRI, which is the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Hsinchu, was deeply involved last year in all sorts of biotech projects. They're really leading the industry right now.
TT: What can the government do to further open up the sector to foreign firms?
Silver: This year, hopefully, Taiwan will alleviate some of its deficiencies in legal and regulatory transparency to help companies set up here, particularly international companies wanting to set up research centers here or create joint ventures. This is where Taiwan is perhaps lagging a little bit behind Singapore, which is known for its very clear and transparent law. But Taiwan is looking to develop its legal infrastructure to make it more attractive for internationalization.
TT: You said there were some deficiencies in the law in Taiwan, problems with regulatory transparency. Do you have any examples of that?
Silver: I wouldn't want to give any specific examples but if you compare Singapore and Taiwan you'll see how Singapore's able to attract multinational pharmaceutical companies to set up easily. Singapore makes sure that intellectual property is going to be protected and that the companies won't run into extra regulatory hurdles in the local jurisdiction of the area they want to set up in.
You can also compare such things as labor laws for foreign employees and the internationalization of the local living environment. So it's not just the regulations but a number of factors which are making Singapore a more attractive option for larger multinational companies.
Traditionally, Taiwan has had a reputation of not protecting IPR [intellectual property rights] and that's something that's not just going to change with the drafting of new laws. It's going to take tough enforcement.
TT: Which areas of Taiwan's biotechnology industry are attracting the most investment?
Silver: In terms of foreign investment, there's been minor investment in certain isolated sectors of the industry, but [the government is] not looking to attract lots of foreign investment, that's not their No. 1 aim.
The industry has a lot of government investment support, and the government's pushing private investment as well through venture capital funds, local ones, and also through the big industrial conglomerates in Taiwan. They're pushing them to really invest in their own futures, as some of them are still a little too reliant on sunset indus-tries, so they're trying to push these big groups.
But I think in an industry like biotechnology, the aim for countries like Taiwan and other Asian countries, is not really to be this big magnet to foreign investment. It's basically to set up conditions in the country which help the industry to develop and provides a stable environment to develop new technologies. They also hope that companies don't only acquire technology from overseas and that local scientists will stay in Taiwan.
TT: How has government support for the industry been and what more could they do?
Silver: The Chen administration has pledged a lot of money although there are a lot of competing government organizations and quasi-governmental agencies that are perhaps overlapping in their responsibilities. Perhaps there could be some consolidation and clearer lines of responsibility among these groups.
For example, there's Academia Sinica, ITRI, the Ministry of Econo-mic Affairs' Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industry Program Office, the Development Center for Biotechnology, the Department of Health and the National Health Research Institutes. There are all these groups which are in some ways overlapping, yet often times focused on doing their own thing. Ironically, each would like to claim they are the drivers of the industry.
I know a guy from Toronto University who's studying the biotech industry in various East Asian countries. He's very interested in the comparison between Singapore and Taiwan. He says the life sciences industry in Taiwan is like a jazz orchestra, and in Singapore it's like a symphony orchestra.
There's an entrepreneurial spirit in Taiwan but there doesn't seem to be a band leader. People like to do their own thing but it doesn't necessarily come together right.
Singapore, on the other hand, has a similar amount of government support but they have very centralized direction.
TT: So where does BiotechEast fit into the picture?
Silver: When this concept was started, which was in mid-1999, one of the co-founders of the group worked in the securities industry and he had a lot of enquiries about Taiwan's life sciences industries. At that time, and even still today, biotech was the hot stock pick, and nobody could find any information in English on life science companies in Taiwan. So my colleague and I decided, initially almost as a pet project, to set up an online database of companies and institutions in Taiwan.
As we developed the concept we saw that there was a real need for that information in English. And then as our information resources grew, we would try to get into offline services, such as consulting.
But our mission is to advance Taiwan's biotech and pharmaceutical industry. And we do that by providing a free industry portal into Taiwan from the outside world. We're filling a gap that was very obvious to us. We're basically trying to advance Taiwan's industries by giving the outside world what they want.
At the moment our Web site has been online for about a year and a half. We are very visible and prominent on the Internet. If you do a search on a search engine for "Taiwan" and "biotech" or "pharmaceutical," "medical devices" or even "Chinese medicine" ours is the No. 1 Web site -- well above any of the government Web sites which are trying to do something similar to us.
In fact, on any government biotech life science Web site, English is only an afterthought. And there is often limited, poor quality English on those sites. So we really feel we're doing the government a service.
We provide information on over 600 companies and over 40 institutions which are life-science related. And we cover news as well, some we write ourselves, some that is links to other stuff that's been written. Without wanting to sound presumptuous, we really don't think we have any competition.
TT: What kind of relationship do you have with the government?
Silver: We have a good relationship with the government, but it's not a formal one. What we would like to do is develop a more formal relationship with the government, particularly with groups that have been given the responsibility to internationalize the industry. It's been my experience that it's very difficult to do that without native English speakers or people in a cross-cultural position. We feel we're in a good position to help the government internationalize the industry.
TT: How do Singapore and Taiwan compare when promoting their biotech sectors on the international stage?
Silver: I went to the Biotech 2002 Exhibition in Toronto, and Singapore had this fantastic pavilion staffed by professionals from the industry and from the government. Then I went to the Taiwan pavilion which was nothing more than a strip of stalls hidden back in some corner of the exhibition hall. There were very few staff who could give visitors a local feel of what was happening in Taiwan.
TT: What do you think about the CEPD's [Council for Economic Planning and Development] proposal to set up agricultural technology parks in Pingtung, Tainan and Changhua?
Silver: This is just one part of the government's plans for parks. There are so many plans for parks at the moment, and I think it's great.
TT: How can biotech be used to strengthen Taiwan's economy?
Silver: The concept of manufacturing as the engine of Taiwan's economy is losing favor. Making umbrellas and shoes -- that went out years ago. Even OEM is drifting over to lower-labor-cost markets. Taiwan wants to get higher up on the value-added chain. To do that it has to keep R&D and its design and innovation in Taiwan.
The life science industry is a perfect opportunity for Taiwan to jump out of manufacturing and to have a whole rethink to move up the value-added chain. That's why there was such a push from the government to make this one of their priorities.
People are saying life sciences should be the nation's economic savior. Whether alone it can help Taiwan bridge the economic difficulties facing the nation, that may be a bit optimistic.
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