Materia Medica Malaysiana

New focus for BioValley

The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations is taking another look at BioValley to ensure the initiative takes a more commercial approach, with a greater focus on the private sector being the driver.

It is learnt that a new thrust will be to make bio-manufacturing and related services, such as contract research and clinical trials, a key element of the initiative.
While this is lower down the value chain (compared with drug discovery), it nevertheless will act as a quicker way to kick-start the country’s biotech industry.

“It will create jobs and build up the critical mass of activities related to the biotech industry,” says a party familiar with the new plan.

The new thrust also gells with earlier calls from overseas Malaysian scientists to focus on bio-manufacturing as the country is already known for its manufacturing prowess and making the leap to bio-manufacturing is a natural step.

The plan to build three biotech research institutes is also being questioned, as the new leadership at the ministry wants to be sure that these set-ups have tangible commercial value and do not end up as white elephants.

The government launched the BioValley plan in May last year to spearhead and accelerate the process of extracting healing properties from the country’s flora and fauna and turn them into marketable medicines.

So far, three interim labs involved in the research on genomics, natural products and plant biotechnology have been set up at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia and the Malaysian Agricultural Research Development Institute, respectively.

Even with the focus on bio-manufacturing, there will be challenges. For one, there is unanimous agreement that there is simply still not enough biotech personnel in Malaysia to start any such initiative. The government needs to woo biotech companies from around the world to set up manufacturing facilities here.

As a result, the long-overdue incentive package to attract companies to the BioValley is likely to include incentives aimed at making Malaysia an attractive location for bio-manufacturing.

Industry experts caution that the incentives have to be as good if not better than what is offered by other countries also targeting bio-manufacturing. In Germany, for instance, if a start-up has procured venture funding, the government will provide matching soft loans to the company.

To get a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities available, the ministry is sending a high-powered delegation to a bio-tech conference in the US next week, led by Minister Datuk Jamaluddin Jarjis.