National Academies plug biotech in Russia
With biosecurity issues an important impetus, a committee of the National Academies in Washington late in July named biotech as one of several “pillars” for supporting US-Russian collaborative efforts while bolstering Russia's faltering public health infrastructure. However, although Russia would benefit from “an internationally competitive biotechnology sector,” that goal will remain “a long way off” until the country develops consistent tax and reward–oriented intellectual property policies, and also streamlines its capacity for evaluating biotech products and facilities, according to the National Academies report, Biological Science and Biotechnology in Russia: Controlling Diseases and Enhancing Security. Among other things, the report cites Russian estimates of a domestic market for human drugs amounting to $5 billion in 2005, perhaps $50 million in sales per year for human vaccines and little or no data for sales of such products for plants and animals. The report adds that biotech would augment Russia's public health surveillance-and-response system, research on pathogens and enhance “increased mutual confidence” involving research in “sensitive areas.” Russian scientists, who once worked in bioweapons programs and developed “world-class expertise,” could be more fully engaged in meeting pressing public health needs, says National Academies committee member Christopher Howson of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation in White Plains, New York. He added that “our hope is that Russians might be encouraged to develop the biotechnology sector not only for their own population but for exports in the future.” JLF
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