MEXICO CITY—For decades, Mexican biomedical scientists have focused on basic research, looking with suspicion on those few colleagues who spoke of applying discoveries in the clinic or generating profits. However, this attitude is changing, according to Juan Pedro Laclette, general coordinator of the Scientific and Technological Consultative Forum, the main research advisory agency to the Mexican government: “Scientists are showing more interest in innovation and its potential to generate revenues,” Laclette says.

In the past two years, a group of high-ranking scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the largest federally funded university in the country, have poured 5.5 million pesos ($450,000) of their own money into a 15-million-peso fund aimed at getting startups off the ground. “This is unprecedented,” says Carlos Arias, director of the UNAM's Biotechnology Institute in Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos, where most of the entrepreneur-scientists also work. Arias notes that the establishment of a technology transfer office at the institute has contributed to the entrepreneurial environment.

One of the startups supported by the endeavor is a company known as Biodetecta, which officially completed its business incubation period in December—making it the first of these startups to do so. That same month, a subsidiary of Biodetecta called Biohominis, which is devoted to molecular and genetic testing in humans, announced it had secured a partnership with Mexico's National Institute of Genomic Medicine.

“By April 2011, two more subsidiaries dedicated to animal and plant molecular testing will be available,” says Eduardo Valencia, chief executive officer of Biodetecta.

Money from the government of Morelos State has helped fund the business incubator program. Additionally, a grant of 6 million pesos from the Institute of Science and Technology of Mexico City subsidized some of the cost of operation and helped pay for the technology transfer related to a diagnostic kit for the H1N1 influenza developed by scientists at UNAM’s Biotechnology Institute.

The benefits of home-grown biomedical businesses are clear, according to Isabel Tussié-Luna, chief operations officer of Biodetecta: “Because some of our scientific partners are experts on [the] genetic variability of the Mexican population in areas like cancer, diabetes and obesity, we have the unique capability to assess the analysis results in the context of the Mexican population.”