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A survey of South-North health biotech collaboration

Nature Biotechnology volume 27, pages 229–232 (2009)Cite this article

To the Editor:

In recent years, biotech companies in North America and Europe have increasingly looked to developing countries to find new partners and develop new collaborations. Even though the growth rates of emerging economies like China and India, as well as several sub-Saharan African countries, have been hampered by the current global recession, over the past five years their economies have grown faster than economies anywhere else in the world1. This growth has been reflected by growing indigenous private sectors in health biotech that are also taking active steps to strengthen their innovation capabilities2,3,4, thereby allowing collaboration to become a two-way street.

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Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3: North-South firm collaboration in health biotech.

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Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank all the firms that responded to the survey and generously shared their expertise and time. They also thank Jocalyn Clark for her comments on the manuscript. This project was funded by Genome Canada through the Ontario Genomics Institute, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and supported by the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health. The McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, Program on Ethics and Commercialization is primarily supported by Genome Canada through the Ontario Genomics Institute, the Ontario Research Fund and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Other matching partners are listed at http://www.mrcglobal.org/. M.R. is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Training Award. A.S.D. and P.A.S. are supported by the McLaughlin Centre for Molecular Medicine. H.T. is supported by a New Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Program on Ethics and Commercialization, McLaughlin Rotman Centre for Global Health, Canada

    Christina C. Melon, Monali Ray, Sharon Chakkalackal, Michelle Li, Jan E. Cooper, Jennifer Chadder, Abdallah S. Daar, Peter A. Singer & Halla Thorsteinsdóttir

  2. Institute of Policy and Management, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

    Wen Ke

  3. Human Resource Management Department, China Women's University, Beijing, China

    Lexuan Li

  4. Arid Lands Agricultural Research Institute, Ain Shams University, Egypt

    Magdy A. Madkour

  5. Center for Special Studies and Programs (CSSP), Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt

    Sahar Aly & Nefertiti Adly

  6. Research and Information System for Developing Countries, India

    Sachin Chaturvedi

  7. University of Zambia, Zambia

    Victor Konde

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Competing interests

P.A.S. has been the recipient of consulting funds from Merck Frosst Canada and is on the scientific advisory board of the Bioveda II fund in China.

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Melon, C., Ray, M., Chakkalackal, S. et al. A survey of South-North health biotech collaboration. Nat Biotechnol 27, 229–232 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0309-229

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