Government Fosters Malaysian Biotech

Contributing editor Patrick McGee spoke recently with Iskandar Mizal Mahmood, the CEO of the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation (MBC), an entity formed by the Malaysian government to serve as a catalyst for the country’s fledgling biotechnology sector. The government has been behind a number of other biotechnology initiatives as well. In 2003, it launched the BioValley project, which is expected to attract anywhere from $10.5 to $12.2 billion in investments over the next decade. Two hundred companies are expected to be based in a special area of what has been dubbed the Multimedia Super Corridor by 2013, with the government contributing $263 million to jump-start the project. In 1996, Malaysia established the National Biotechnology Directorate (Biotek), which has played a major role in spearheading the national biotechnology program via research, development and commercialization, corporate relations, and human resource development. In 1999, Biotek formed a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to train scientists in areas such as genomics, bio-informatics, and bioprocessing.

Patrick McGee: How did the biotechnology effort in Malaysia start and what is its goal?

Iskandar Mahmood: In Malaysia, biotechnology had been identified as the key technology that would drive and support the country to be involved in a technology based economy. And this is something that, with a conscious effort, we began several years ago. The foundation had been laid towards building a competitive biotechnology industry since the Eighth Malaysia Plan. Now we’re going into the Ninth Malaysia Plan. We focused ourselves on building the platform in terms of the R&D and then certain enhancements in technology infrastructure and facilities to foster the innovation and industry development under the Eighth Malaysia Plan. With that being in place now, the Ninth Malaysia Plan, and together with the national biotechnology policy that was unveiled by the Prime Minister last year, we are focusing our efforts more towards bringing all this from the lab to the market.

PM: There were plans to build three centers of excellence. What are these centers and what’s their status?

IM: Deriving from the national biotech policy and also from the fact that we’re trying to leverage the strength that we already have, the three centers of excellence are actually an enhancement of existing centers. They are the National Institute of Pharmaceuticals and Nutraceuticals, and the other one is the National Institute of AgroBiotechnology, and the third one would be the National Institute of Genomics. They’re all operating within the existing structure of the research institutions within Malaysia, and especially so within the system of the universities.

PM: So they’re basically in sites where existing universities already are?

IM: Yes. You know, the collaboration is very important. That’s why under the national biotech policy, the emphasis is given to a particular concept which we named the Bio Nexus. It’s a nexus, a network. It’s a powerful network whereby the collaboration between the research institutes as well as the industry, the funding entities, actually work together.

PM: There is concern in Malaysia about what some are calling a brain-drain, and there have been efforts to retain some of the native talent that comes out of universities there. What is happening with that? Is Malaysia actively recruiting scientists from other countries and what incentives are they offering?



IM: This has been addressed under the national biotech policy. A portion of the program, which the government will launch pretty soon, is called the Brain Gain Program. The global biotech value chain is just too wide. Admittedly, no country and no one particular company will be able to claim that they have all the expertise in biotechnology because it’s a wide field. The concept of Bio Nexus caters to the local companies, local institutions. At the same time, they cater to collaborative arrangements with other institutes all around the world, be it in the US, be it in Europe, or anywhere else around the planet. That’s why the concept of collaborative arrangement is very important.

We have several research products, which have been commercialized by local companies as well, catering to the global market. An example would be the Malaysian Biodiagnostic Research Company. It is a collaborative arrangement between the entrepreneurs as well as the Malaysia University of Science and Technology, whereby they have commercialized several rapid diagnostic kits for diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid, and so on.

Some of the other success stories are MARDI, the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute. They have developed a virus-resistant rice. MPOB, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, is working on developing better quality oil and it also has extracted Vitamin E tocotrienol, and it’s now been commercialized. We also have a publicly listed company here in Malaysia, Hovid, that has a collaborative arrangement with one of the local universities, and they have been successful in producing bio diesel as well as Vitamin E extract, tocotrienol, as well.

PM: Obviously when you’re doing something like this, there are certain challenges. Can you talk about what you see as some of the most challenging things Malaysia has had to face in trying to get this kind of project off the ground and running?

IM: To me the main challenge would be—as it would be with any country, as it would be any company—it’s all the issue of speed in getting it to market. At the end of the day, it’s a biotechnology product. Biotechnology really is a tool. It’s a means to an end. The end is there because of its pervasive impact to the global population, the global economy. It’s about taking it to market, how fast we can take it to the market. That, to me, is the real challenge.

PM: What do you hope to see happen over the next three to five years with this project in Malaysia?

IM: We’re supporting quite a bit of a project under the Ninth Malaysia Plan. What we are hoping to occur and what we will be working hard to get would be the rolling out of this project and getting this product into the market as quickly as possible. Bearing in mind, as I mentioned to you earlier, if there is one particular challenge, it would be speed of getting it to market. There are a lot of opportunities out there from an agrobiotechnology standpoint, from a health care standpoint. We have our focused areas in enhancement of yield for certain crops and value added from existing commodities from a health care perspective. We’ve got several clinical trial initiatives, contract manufacturing initiatives, vaccine initiatives, diagnostic initiatives, and other initiatives that we’re hoping to roll out. We’re doing our utmost to roll those out within the next three years or so.