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Published online 10 July 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.643
News: Q&A
Taiwan's hopes for a biotech revolution
The president of the country's top research institute on growing the knowledge economy.
In October 2006, Chi-Huey Wong took over the reins of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan's top research institute. Convinced that Taiwan's former reliance on contract manufacturing is a dead end, Wong has been working closely with key government officials since then to help the country speedily establish its biotechnology industry.
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I believe Taiwan’s biotech revolution still needs three essential elements. One is long-term vision of biotech industry instead of short-term investment. Second is open-mined peer review system for biotech policy. Third is international cooperation for global market. Frank Tung CEO, GeneCure Biotechnologies
Taiwan and China mainland is a country, Taiwan·s biotech revolution must be considered as a big industry .as did china mainland, I think Taiwan has itsself advantages than China Mainland.
It is evident that the government of Taiwan has provided the facilities and environment to Biopharmaceutical industry, the next question is what are the future products and where is the market? This question is seldom addressed. The pharmaceutical industry fundamentally functions as a stable source for updated therapeutics to relieve suffering. It is not the availability of new target drugs, but rather the affordability of these drugs that is the major issue we currently face in the medication and health care industry in Taiwan and worldwide. Most of patients in Taiwan, Asia and other area of the world lack access to modern therapeutics due to the astronomical prices of novel target drugs and as a result, lives are lost solely due to economic reasons. This may place a big burden on our society and may on other part of the world; in a recent example, a Taipei bus driver who was taking an old generation anti-diabetes medication that caused hypoglycemia and the subsequent dizziness lost control while driving and caused an accident which resulted in the loss of two innocent lives. It is evident that there is a dire need of inexpensive yet effective target drugs in Taiwan, Asia and global pharmaceutical markets. Currently, the strategies of new drug R&D in Taiwan are derived from those of the US. Most of the talent scientists in Taiwan are devoted to discovering novel targets and looking for corresponding novel compounds and hope that their products can be exported to the worldwide market. This is scientifically and business wide challenging, though the outcome may fundamentally improve human health care. However, the major and immediate challenge in Taiwanese medication is not a lack of novel therapeutics, but the unaffordable prices of these therapeutics. Should western-trained scientists in Taiwan allocate part of their talent to finding a way to discover inexpensive yet high-quality medications? Creative strategies for new drug discovery and development can be integrated to form a novel approach to providing economical and effective target therapeutics to this newly emerging market. A number of studies have revealed that plants are a major source of novel and effective therapeutics as they are inexpensive while also fundamentally influencing human medication. We should be able to further develop this conclusion by providing evidence that therapeutically active molecules can be identified and extracted from plants in both a cost-effective manner and reasonable time frame. Klim King CEO, Viogene Biotek Corp. Taipei, Taiwan