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'India has the potential to be global biotech leader'

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

"The Indian IT industry should consider the prevailing gloomy scenario gripping its software sector as a golden opportunity to make a foray into biotechnology for emerging as a global leader in the next 10 years."

That was a terse message from Novo Nordisk vice-president Borge Diderichsen, who exhorted the harried IT community in Bangalore to forget the slowdown in the US economy and get cracking to develop software solutions and data-based applications in the field of biotechnology, which is set to revolutionise humankind as never before.

"India has already established as a technology powerhouse in the field of IT. It only needs to make a paradigm shift for marrying IT with BT in this decade. It has the wherewithal as no other country to develop software-driven instruments or products for capitalising on the growth of biotechnology that is set to herald the next revolution in human history during the 21st century," Diderichsen told rediff.com at the ongoing Bio.Com 2001 summit in Bangalore.

While the going was good, it certainly made a lot of business sense for the Indian IT industry to cash in on the global opportunities that unfolded during the last decade for developing all the software to drive the old economy into the Internet age.

"It is time this industry caught up with bioinformatics to repeat the success story in integrating and globalising the world economy through computers, networking, and the all-pervasive Internet," he said.

"Though it is my first visit to India, I've discovered such a wealth of scientific talent here that this country has the right environment to make an immense contribution in biotechnology for better health and more wealth for all," Diderichsen revealed after making his keynote address at the three-day mega event on 'The dawn of the biotech era: New knowledge, better health, more wealth'.

The software sector that is catering to global companies in enhancing their businesses through technology, should now turn to its own Indian scientists, scholars, and academic experts in life sciences for converting their bright ideas and research findings into a reality, affirmed the Danish expert, who heads the $3-billion Novo Nordisk's Corporate Research Affairs in Denmark.

Just as it has taken over a decade for the Indian IT industry to emerge as a software superpower with global companies like Infosys and Wipro, it will need about that much time for India to emerge as a global bioinformatcis leader.

For that the Indian scientific and IT communities should enter into strategic alliances (both intra and inter) as well as with global players like Nova Nordisk for tapping the opportunities unfolding in BT the world over.

"Unlike in other areas, there is a lot of basic research that takes places in life sciences, generating enormous amount of data, information, and mind-boggling statistics. All these need to be organised, compiled, collated, and developed into a huge database. It is here the Indian IT companies can contribute immensely by developing the right kind of software solutions and instruments that can harness a plethora of data, information, and figures."

The Indian software companies, which have been making a beeline to the Silicon Valley of the US, should now turn to Europe where a Medicon Valley has come up in Scandinavia with the highest number of biotech companies.

The medico/human life sciences in Medicon Valley boast of about 90 biotech firms, around 71 pharma companies, 125 medicotech companies, 16 contract research organizations, and about 200 other active R&D companies.

"It's a golden opportunity especially for the Bangalore-based software professionals who can create new knowledge, better health, and more wealth with a ethical balance of making optimal use of nature's resources.

They should set their sights on the Medicon Valley as the regions has around 3.2 million inhabitants with 11 universities and 120,000 students, besides 26 hospitals. The sheer size should mean a huge business potential for the Indian techies, scientists, and bio experts," Diderichsen averred.

For instance, about 10 per cent of the total R&D budget of the 12 largest life science companies is used on IT alone. This fraction is expected to go up in the near future, as biology will be the dominating application of the computer sciences, Diderichsen said quoting Martin Walker of Compaq's European department for high-capacity computers.

Defining bioinformatics as a means for analysing, comparing, storing, systemising, searching, biological information, which includes sequences, structures, function, and phylogeny, Diderichsen said the symbiotic relationship of IT and BT is based on the integration of computer science, physics, mathematics, and statistics.

"Biotechnology could become the greatest healing power on earth during the 21st century. The completion of the human genome project could alone lead to a host of advances, including effective treatment for a number of diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, and the dreadful AIDS," Diderichsen stated quoting former US vice-president Al Gore's address on the subject in October 1997.

Take diabetes, for instance: the most common disease in the world. On account of changing lifestyles and values, the number of patients suffering from type 1 and type 2 symptoms or stages of diabetes is increasing by the day. And people with diabetes have 3 times higher risk of heart disease; 2.5 times higher risk of stroke, and 65 per cent of them suffer from high blood pressure.

According to the latest surveys, the diabetes epidemic is set to grow rapidly, thanks to the stress of modern life that plagues the urban people with anxiety gripping them. As a result, within a span of 6 years, the number of diabetic patients has shot up to a whopping 150 million the world over in 2000 from less than 100 million in 1994. The figures are expected to touch 200-250 million by 2010.

Recalling the views of global IT czar Bill Gates, Diderichsen said though the founder of Microsoft believed in information technology, he admitted it would be hard to argue that the emerging medical revolution, spearheaded by biotechnology industry, would be any less important.

"The impact of new technologies on human genome will be far reaching as it opens up a host of challenging opportunities to develop commercial applications derived from genomes in the areas of diagnostics, gene therapy, therapeutic proteins, and smart drugs," Diderichsen asserted.

Indeed, there is gold in the genes. The moot point is how best the Indian experts in both the field of IT and BT would go about mining it for emerging as a superpower in the biotech world too.

"For instance, the dramatic progress in the ongoing genomic research would mean many genes associated with common diseases could be identified for novel and effective treatment, using bioinformatics and its applications," Diderichsen claimed.

In this context, the bio-scientist mentioned the views of Charles R Cantor of Nature Biotechnology, who once said: "There is a need to train a new generation of scientists with quite a different perspectives for fully exploiting the wealth of information already available."

With a view to making the world's scientific biodiversity data freely available to all, Diderichsen said a Global Biodiversity Information Facility had been set up in the Medicon Valley. "It is an interoperable, distributed network of scientific biodiversity databases with worldwide affiliations. Its focus is on species and specimen level data with links to molecular, genetic and ecosystems levels," he added.

As bioinformatics will be fundamental to the future development of all life sciences, the endeavor of GBIF will be to devote half of all scientific research to the life sciences and associated fields, such as health, agriculture and food, ecology, and environment.

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