Malaysia Can Be Clinical Research Centre

KUALA LUMPUR, April 26 (Bernama) -- Malaysia can become an effective centre for clinical research at a relatively low cost compared to Western nations, Science, Technology and Innovations Minister Datuk Dr Jamaluddin Jarjis said.
He said giant pharmaceutical companies, especially those in Europe and the United States, were facing high research and development and production costs.
This made the medicines produced by them very expensive and not competitive in the market, he said when winding up the debate on the Ninth Malaysia Plan for his ministry in the Dewan Rakyat Wednesday.
As an example, clinical trials alone could exceed 60 per cent of production cost of medicines, sometimes as high as US$1 billion (RM3.65 billion), he said.
"In this aspect, Malaysia can play an effective role as we have the experts, infrastructure and advanced equipment needed," he said.
Jamaluddin said Malaysia's strategic location could also make it an important distribution centre in the Asia-Pacific region not only for medicines but diagnostics equipment and biomedicines as well.
He said the world's biotechnology industry was expected to reach RM3.69 trillion by 2015 and Malaysia would use every means possible to offer attractive incentives to get a share of the earnings now valued at RM184 billion annually.