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Only six months after it was first publicly discussed, a network of life scientists in the Asia-Pacific region that aims to boost biomedical research and biotechnology in the area has begun to take shape. The network will be modelled on the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

Meeting in Shanghai, China, at the end of last month, representatives of the founding members of the International Molecular Biology Network for Asia and the Pacific Rim (IMBN) agreed on rules for membership and a draft constitution. They also elected key officers, and pulled together sufficient seed funding to begin operations next year.

The concept of the network was discussed at a meeting of scientists from throughout the region in June (see Nature, 388, 3; 1997) and was endorsed by science officials of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore in October.

Ken-ichi Arai of Tokyo University's Institute of Medical Science has been elected chairman of a task force that will draw up an initial membership of about 200 scientists from the region by next spring and set up a governing council. Jeongbin Yim, director of the Institute for Molecular Biology and Genetics at Seoul National University in Korea, and Louis Lim of the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Singapore, will both act as vice-chairmen.

The executive director and coordinator of the network's secretariat is Gurinder Shahi, a founding father of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul (see Nature 389, 655; 1997). He will be based in Singapore, but expects the network to have ‘virtual’ offices throughout the region, which he will coordinate. As in the case of EMBO, members wi be selected on the basis of scientific ‘excellence’; EMBO is expected to help by screening potential members, says Shahi.

The task force set approximate membership quotas for each country or economyin the area. Japan is expected to have up to about 40 members, Australia, China, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), and Korea up to about 20 each, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand and Singapore up to about 10 each, and Indo-nesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand up to about 5 each.

But the task force also wants membership to be open to individuals from other countries in Asia and the Pacific Rim, including, potentially, the United States, Canada, Russia and Latin American countries in APEC.

A governing council will be elected from among the founding members, probably with one representative from each country/ economy in the region, but possibly with one extra representative for those with large numbers of members. “Such an approach will help ensure broad representation while enabling more scientists from economies with a concentration of excellence to serve IMBN,” says Shahi.

The first meeting of the governing council will be held in June in Pohang, South Korea, in association with IMBN's first conference, to be held that month in Seoul. A second phase of membership development is planned after June with membership on two levels — ‘members’ who will be able to vote and serve as members of the governing council, and ‘associates’ , those committed to the idea of IMBN but not yet meeting the organization's criteria of excellence.

Several participating institutions have agreed to provide seed financial support to kick-start IMBN activities, and funding commitments totalling more than US$300,000 have already been made by institutions, government and industry in the region.

IMBN plans to support short-term fellowships for scientists and graduate students to visit centres of excellence for collaborative research and/or training. It will also sponsor courses and workshops and provide small grants for collaborative research involving scientists from two or more economies.