India counsels Europe on biotechnology, life science

BRUSSELS - Europe is increasingly looking to India for expertise in the area of life sciences and biotechnology, says an official from a leading Belgian biosciences company. Staf Van Reet, managing director of the Belgian company Viziphar Biosciences, told a seminar on challenges and opportunities in India that the country has tremendous potential for global sourcing in life sciences. "We are starting with an R&D project in tuberculosis, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Sciences in Bangalore," he said at the seminar organised here by the Belgo-Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. INEP agency quoted Van Reet as citing the example of the Janssen Stability Centre, which he set up in Mumbai in 1999 when he was managing director of Janssen Pharmaceutica, now a part of Johnson and Johnson. The aim, he said, "is to turn the Centre into a 150-seat Centre of Exce llence, with an investment of up to $18 million". Instead of using the word outsourcing, he said he preferred the term global sourcing, which he defined as "integrating the best resources and capabilities of India, Europe and America". Said another speaker Marc Van Montagu: "India needs to boost the culture of innovation, to move from an outsourcing service industry to an innovative R&D based industry." Montagu, who heads the Institute for Plant Biotechnology for Developing Countries in Belgium's Ghent University and is a pioneer in plant biotechnology, claimed that India's policies for genetically modified (GM) food crops were "unfavourable". "No adverse effects have been reported with approved GM crops," he declared, adding, "Any negative long-term ecological effects can be lower than those of traditional agriculture." Montagu was confident that "transgenic plants will become very important for industry," and pointed to developments in China and in Brazil, whose president had been persuaded by his academic advisors to promote the use of GM crops. Jayant Nadiger, head of the Trade and Investment office in Bangalore of Belgium's Flanders region, told the seminar that biotechnology had been "aptly described as the 'technology of hope' because of the promise it holds out for food, health and environmental sustainability". Nadiger, who has been instrumental in setting up Belgian companies in south India and Indian companies in the Flanders region, noted that the Indian biotech industry is growing rapidly, driven by "the strong networking partnership between large pharmaceutical firms and biotechnology firms". Indian consumption of biotech products was "expected to quadruple in the next decade", he said. A Belgian trade mission will visit India from March 20. Its organisers, representing the Wallonia region of Belgium, view the biotech sector as "attractive, not only for pharmaceuticals but also the agro-food industry". India's highly qualified workforce is an attraction for Belgium's "spin-off" companies, according to the organisers. They also point to the opportunities India offers "to carry out clinical tests at very competitive prices and covering numerous tropical diseases". "Source":[ http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=news&doc_id=12025&start=1&control=142&page_start=1&page_nr=101&pg=1]

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