Speakers:
1) Prof. Paul Teng,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
2) Mr. Robert, H. Mayer, BiotechCorp Malaysia
3) Mr. Izhar Hifnei Ismail, BiotechCorp Malaysia
While Malaysia has identified
biotechnology and agriculture as key economic drivers, commercialization
of local grown technology is still at infancy. Scientists are struggling
to translate their bench work into dollars and cents, whereas the
local entrepreneurs and industry are not in the forefront yet to invest
and buy technologies from public research institutes and universities.
Another challenge is that the popular notion that biotechnology only
revolves around gene technology has to be dismissed so that entrepreneurs
will widen their horizon and venture into other areas of biobusiness.
This seminar attempted
to dissect the various opportunities and potential that are offered
by bioscience and biobusiness, the concerns and challenges, market,
the different disciplines of biobusiness from the ‘low-end’
to the ‘high-end’ applications, and also the incentive
and support available for biotech entreprenuers.
Prof. Paul Teng from the
National Institute of Education, Singapore was the key speaker who
explored various disciplines of life sciences to create new biobusinesses.
The value chain; Asian biobusiness landscape; mushroom culture; biobusinesses
based on microbiology; applied plant physiology and phytochemistry;
applied genetics and breeding; tissue culture; genetic engineering;
and tapping the opportunities for biobusiness entrepreneurship in
Asia were some of the topics covered.
Another speaker, Mr. Robert
H. Mayer, the Executive-in-Residence for the Malaysian Biotechnology
Corporation presented a talk on “Keys to Building Values in
Bio-Businesses”. Mr. Mayer who is mentoring the Bionexus companies,
shared with the audience his expertise in building biobusinesses and
commercialization. His experience and involvement in the US biotechnology
industry was very relevant to our local entrepreneurs. Mr. Izhar Hifnei
Ismail, Senior Vice President at the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation
presented the opportunities, incentives and the support available
for biotechnology companies in his talk entitled “Incentives
for Biotechnology Companies in Malaysia”.
The 21st century will be
a century of biology. Based on economic consequences, budgets, size
of work force, and output of major discoveries, biology or more precisely,
biotechnology is becoming bigger than any other sciences. Successful
business models are developed to harness the potential of bioscience
to meet the demands of food, feed, fiber, fuel, and organochemicals
based on value creation and value capture mechanisms. Many Asian countries
are emerging as key players in biobusiness such as Korea, India, China,
Singapore, and the Philippines. Due to their culture, demographics
and economics, bioscience products provide huge potential for exploitation
and value creation to Asian countries. This potential will be further
enhanced by the declining capacity of the world’s oil reserves
to provide hydrocarbons for fuel and materials, and plants will be
become more important as bio-factories for basic ingredients to sustain
human societies.
Malaysian scientists and
entrepreneurs should be able to rise to the challenge and address
the issues and constraints in commercialization. The seminar was attended
by around 150 participants who were scientists, policy makers, academia,
students, and industry players.
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