Taiwan has a good chance to play an important role in the biotechnology industry if the nation can effectively integrate its medical research infrastructure with its strengths in the electronics and information industries, an Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) official said in Taipei yesterday.
By doing so, it could attract international companies to set up bioinformatics research and development (R&D) centers in Taiwan, Hsieh Liang-han (謝良翰), general director of ITRI’s international business center told the Taipei Times yesterday.
“Taiwan’s strength lies in its information and communications technology [ICT] industry and basic research. I believe if the nation’s biotechnology industry can integrate with the ICT industry, it will begin to develop at a faster pace,” Hsieh said at the sidelines of the 2008 APEC Biotechnology Conference organized by the ITRI.
What Taiwan lacks now in the field of biotechnology is the “link” in the industry value chain, Hsieh said.
For example, Taiwan may be strong in the basic research of liver disease, but the local biotech industry is still in the development stage, Hsieh said.
Stanley Chang (張世忠), chairman of the Taipei-based Medigen Biotechnology Corp (基亞生物科技), who was invited to give a speech at the conference, agreed.
“Taiwan is strong in a couple of research topics in the world, with liver cancer being our strongest point. Integrating Taiwan’s precision equipment and biotechnology is a new direction that we can seriously consider,” Chang told the Taipei Times yesterday after his speech.
To attract international companies, such as the Switzerland-based pharmaceutical companies Novartis International AG and Roche Applied Science to set up their R&D centers in Taiwan, Hsieh said the government would have to first set up a few centers of excellence, such as in liver disease.
The conference took place at the Taipei International Convention Center yesterday, with “adding value to biomedical translational medicine” being its main theme. Hsieh said ITRI’s international business center would focus on linking the laboratory and the “patient’s bedside” this year — often referred to as “bench to bedside” — and encouraging transregional cooperation.
Biotech experts from seven foreign countries were invited by ITRI to share their experiences and national policies regarding translational medicine at the conference yesterday, in an effort to foster cross-regional interaction and translational medicine collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region.
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