Taiwan builds biotech runway - 生技

http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n6/full/nbt0609-490.html

Nature Biotechnology 27, 490 (2009)

Taiwan builds biotech runway
Susan Aldridge

Taiwan's government has announced the launch of a $1.76 billion venture
capital fund as part of a comprehensive 'biotechnology takeoff package' aimed
at putting the country on Asia's biotech map. The National Development Fund
will have a 40% stake in the venture with the private sector contributing the
rest. "We have a lot of early-stage discovery [in Taiwan] but a mechanism to
commercialize it has been lacking," says Chong-Chou Lee, director of the
biotech office in the government's science and technology advisory group. "We
need this package to [bridge the gap between discovery and] clinical trials
and then think about partners for tech transfer." Taiwan urgently needs an
innovation-based biotech business to replace its manufacturing-based
information and communications technology (ICT) industry. Taiwan's pool of
medical professionals and well-equipped facilities have so far attracted
companies such as Novartis of Basel and London-based GlaxoSmithKline, who
have set up clinical R&D centers in the capital. But Taiwan's limited
domestic market has meant that growth in the biopharma sector has been
modest. With the newly launched venture capital fund, any biotech project
with commercial potential, based in Taiwan, stands a good chance of being
supported, provided the products eventually make it to the global market.
"Innovation in biotechnology here is growing, but the challenge is to connect
the local with the global," says Chung-Cheng Liu, general director of
Biomedical Engineering Research Laboratories (BEL) in Taipei, the largest
nonprofit R&D organization in Taiwan and part of the Industrial Technology
Research Institute (ITRI). The fund will support the drive towards
commercialization with measures aimed at strengthening the country's
infrastructure by, for instance, setting up preclinical testing labs and
establishing the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration to bring the regulatory
environment to international standards. Biotech incubators will be created
within existing science parks, positioning biopharmaceutical companies near
the Academia Sinica (the Taiwanese National Institutes of Health) in Taipei,
medical device firms close to BEL in the Hsinchu area and agricultural
biotech at a site in south Taiwan. The venture fund is looking to boost the
number of licensing deals. For example, the German firm Boehringer Ingelheim
has recently signed an agreement to develop Taipei-based AbGenomics' novel
monoclonal antibody to treat autoimmune diseases, and BEL and the National
Taiwan University Hospital have inked a deal with Exactech, an orthopedics
company located in Gainesville, Florida, to use a cartilage repair platform
developed locally.

簡單來說就是政府出錢扶植有人力但是沒什麼市場的生技產業
期許可以逐漸取代以代工為主的電子產業


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