Development of health biotechnology in developing countries: Can private-sector players be the prime movers?

Health biotechnology has rapidly become vital in helping healthcare systems meet the needs of the poor in developing countries. This key industry also generates revenue and creates employment opportunities in these countries. To successfully develop biotechnology industries in developing nations, it is critical to understand and improve the system of health innovation, as well as the role of each innovative sector and the linkages between the sectors. Countries' science and technology capacities can be strengthened only if there are non-linear linkages and strong interrelations among players throughout the innovation process; these relationships generate and transfer knowledge related to commercialization of the innovative health products. The private sector is one of the main actors in healthcare innovation, contributing significantly to the development of health biotechnology via knowledge, expertise, resources and relationships to translate basic research and development into new commercial products and innovative processes. The role of the private sector has been increasingly recognized and emphasized by governments, agencies and international organizations. Many partnerships between the public and private sector have been established to leverage the potential of the private sector to produce more affordable healthcare products. Several developing countries that have been actively involved in health biotechnology are becoming the main players in this industry. The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of the private sector in health biotechnology development and to study its impact on health and economic growth through case studies in South Korea, India and Brazil. The paper also discussed the approaches by which the private sector can improve the health and economic status of the poor.     

美国创新创业生态系统中生物技术孵化器的作用

生物医药产业是各大经济体在21世纪优先发展的战略性产业,并逐步成为世界经济的主导产业。我国制定了一系列鼓励政策加快推动生物医药创新发展,为我国生物医药创新打造了良好的大环境。在大众创业、万众创新的大背景下,各地相应建设生物技术科技园和孵化器,促进生物技术企业创新。通过阐述生物产业最为发达的国家——美国不同类型的生物技术孵化器的建设、运营、孵化成功案例等,分析了孵化器内部运营与外部协作的生态关系,总结了孵化器孵化成功的经验,针对我国生物技术孵化器的建立和运营提出了建议。     

The birth pangs of monoclonal antibody therapeutics: The failure and legacy of Centoxin

This paper examines the development and termination of nebacumab (Centoxin®), a human IgM monoclonal antibody (mAb) drug frequently cited as one of the notable failures of the early biopharmaceutical industry. The non-approval of Centoxin in the United States in 1992 generated major concerns at the time about the future viability of any mAb therapeutics. For Centocor, the biotechnology company that developed Centoxin, the drug posed formidable challenges in terms of safety, clinical efficacy, patient selection, the overall economic costs of health care, as well as financial backing. Indeed, Centocor''s development of the drug brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. This article shows how many of the experiences learned with Centoxin paved the way for the current successes in therapeutic mAb development.     

The birth pangs of monoclonal antibody therapeutics

This paper examines the development and termination of nebacumab (Centoxin®), a human IgM monoclonal antibody (mAb) drug frequently cited as one of the notable failures of the early biopharmaceutical industry. The non-approval of Centoxin in the United States in 1992 generated major concerns at the time about the future viability of any mAb therapeutics. For Centocor, the biotechnology company that developed Centoxin, the drug posed formidable challenges in terms of safety, clinical efficacy, patient selection, the overall economic costs of health care, as well as financial backing. Indeed, Centocor's development of the drug brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. This article shows how many of the experiences learned with Centoxin paved the way for the current successes in therapeutic mAb development.     

The biological sciences in India: Aiming high for the future

India is gearing up to become an international player in the life sciences, powered by its recent economic growth and a desire to add biotechnology to its portfolio. In this article, we present the history, current state, and projected future growth of biological research in India. To fulfill its aspirations, India''s greatest challenge will be in educating, recruiting, and supporting its next generation of scientists. Such challenges are faced by the US/Europe, but are particularly acute in developing countries that are racing to achieve scientific excellence, perhaps faster than their present educational and faculty support systems will allow.India, like China, has been riding a rising economic wave. At the time of writing this article, four Indians rank among the ten wealthiest individuals in the world, and the middle class is projected to rise to 40% of the population by 2025 (Farrell and Beinhocker, 2007). Even with the present global economic setbacks, India''s economy is expected to grow to become the third largest in the world. India''s recent economic boom has been driven largely by its service and information technology industries, fueled to a large extent by jobs provided by multinational companies. However, this “outsourcing” model is unlikely to persist indefinitely. India''s future must rely upon its own capacity for innovation, which will require considerable investment in education and research.Biotechnology represents a potential sector of economic growth and an important component in India''s national health agenda. Appreciating the important role that biology will play in this century, the Indian government is expanding as well as starting several new biological research institutes, which will open up many new positions for life science researchers. Funds also are becoming available for state-of-the-art equipment, thus decreasing the earlier large disparity in support facilities between the top research institutes in India and the US/Europe. India is becoming an increasingly viable location to conduct biological research and a fertile ground for new biotechnology companies. However, success need not rise in proportion to money invested, unless India attracts and supports its best young people to do research.Many academic centers and industries in the US/Europe are beginning to have an eye on India, the world''s largest democratic country, for possible collaborations. Western institutions have long benefited from having Indian scientists on their faculty or postdoctoral fellows/graduate students in their laboratories (perhaps benefitting more than India itself). However, Western scientists, by and large, know very little about the scientific and educational systems in India. (As was true of authors of this article before we began our 8-month sabbatical at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore). The goal of this article is to provide a brief historical and contemporary view of the biological sciences in India. We also provide an editorial perspective on the upcoming challenges for the Indian life sciences, with a particular emphasis on how India will grow and support its next generation of scientific leaders.     

Callus conclusion

For some years students of science and industry have been predicting the pervasive impact of biotechnology on the health care industry. Much has been discussed about the role biotechnology will play in industrial process, diagnostics, and pharmaceutical products. This review examines two branches of biotechnology which are emerging in the in-vitro diagnostics arena which are likely to bear edible fruit in the current decade—monoclonal antibodies and DNA probes.     

Biotechnology,people and markets

In assessing the likely demand for biotechnology products it is not sufficient just to look at what is happening in firms and their immediate market environment. There is no one 'market' for biotechnology products: there are differences between sectors and between countries. You have instead to look at the institutional contexts of the biotechnology product's development. This paper reviews work which has been carried out by social scientists, especially those using 'social shaping' approaches, on the development of new products based on advances in biotechnology and on the creation of markets to go with these products. It examines work on public attitudes to the exploitation of the technology, focusing especially on the issue of social inclusion and exclusion and how biotechnology might make exclusion more likely. It concludes by considering what current differences in public attitudes to the development of some biotechnology-based products might mean for the development of markets for those products in the UK.     

Sexual Healthcare Preferences among Gay and Bisexual Men: A Qualitative Study in San Francisco,California

Background

Research on gay and other men who have sex with men''s (G/MSM) preferences for sexual healthcare services focuses largely on HIV testing and to some extent on sexually transmitted infections (STI). This research illustrates the frequency and location of where G/MSM interface with the healthcare system, but it does not speak to why men seek care in those locations. As HIV and STI prevention strategies evolve, evidence about G/MSM''s motivations and decision-making can inform future plans to optimize models of HIV/STI prevention and primary care.

Methods

We conducted a phenomenological study of gay men''s sexual health seeking experiences, which included 32 in-depth interviews with gay and bisexual men. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and entered into Atlas.ti. We conducted a Framework Analysis.

Findings

We identified a continuum of sexual healthcare seeking practices and their associated drivers. Men differed in their preferences for separating sexual healthcare from other forms of healthcare (“fragmentation”) versus combining all care into one location (“consolidation”). Fragmentation drivers included: fear of being monitored by insurance companies, a desire to seek non-judgmental providers with expertise in sexual health, a desire for rapid HIV testing, perceiving sexual health services as more convenient than primary care services, and a lack of healthcare coverage. Consolidation drivers included: a comfortable and trusting relationship with a provider, a desire for one provider to oversee overall health and those with access to public or private health insurance.

Conclusions

Men in this study were likely to separate sexual healthcare from primary care. Based on this finding, we recommend placing new combination HIV/STI prevention interventions within sexual health clinics. Furthermore, given the evolution of the financing and delivery of healthcare services and in HIV prevention, policymakers and clinicians should consider including more primary care services within sexual healthcare settings.     

英国生物技术产业创新创业生态系统的构建与启示

生物技术产业是各大经济体在21世纪优先发展的战略性产业,逐步成为世界经济的主导产业。英国生物技术产业规模在欧洲排名第一,创新创业文化浓厚。通过孵化器运营案例详细阐述英国生物技术产业发展的生态系统构建。针对我国生物技术产业创新环境提出相应建议,以期对我国生物医药产业的创新创业发展提供借鉴。     

试论生物经济成长(GREW)战略

生命科学与生物技术的发展推动了"生物经济"概念的形成与生物经济时代的来临,进而导致农业、健康医疗、环保、工业制造等产业的生产与消费方式正在发生深刻变革。分别从生物经济对未来农业、健康医疗、环保及制造业的影响进行分析,提出了生物经济成长(GREW)战略。作为一个战略体系,GREW战略包括相互交叉、相互依存与影响的四个子战略:新型农业(Green biotech based)战略、健康医疗(Red biotech based)战略、绿色环保(Grey or Environmental biotech based)战略,以及绿色制造业(White biotech based)战略。GREW战略的及时提出与逐步形成,对于生物产业发展规划及政策制定具有高度前瞻性意义和指导作用。     

Toronto centre hopes to cash in on growing demand for private health services

When the CMA held its 1996 annual meeting, part of the debate on the future of health care involved the "appropriate balance of the roles of the public and private sectors" in delivering health care. The King''s Health Centre in Toronto is now doing its own balancing act: providing publicly funded care to Canadians, and private care to non-Canadians and Canadians who can afford it. This article discusses some of the niche markets King''s is attempting to develop.     

Implications of managed care for health systems,clinicians, and patients.

The rhetoric and realities of managed care are easily confused. The rapid growth of managed care in the United States has had many implications for patients, doctors, employers, state and federal programmes, the health insurance industry, major medical institutions, medical research, and vulnerable patient populations. It has restricted patients'' choice of doctors and limited access to specialists, reduced the professional autonomy and earnings of doctors, shifted power from the non-profit to the for-profit sectors and from hospitals and doctors to private corporations. It has also raised issues about the future structuring and financing of medical education and research and about practice ethics. However, managed care has also accorded greater prominence to the assessment of patient satisfaction, profiling and monitoring of doctors'' work, the use of clinical guidelines and quality assurance procedures and indicated the potential to improve the integration and outcome of care.     

Assessing 'success' in biotechnology development in the UK by 2005

This paper presents quantified estimates of the prospective impacts on the UK economy over 2000-05 of the development of biotechnology. The study has proceeded by identifying the key effects that we expect biotechnology to have, determining on the basis of logic and economic theory the qualitative character of the expected economic consequences, constructing scenarios within the Cambridge Multisectoral Dynamic Model of the UK economy to represent these effects and examining and interpreting the consequences revealed by the model's results. Biotechnology is still at such an early stage that attention is mainly focussed on the impact of biotechnology production, rather than diffusion. The industrial application of biotechnology in relation to the overall economy is likely to remain modest through to 2005, but will probably be greater in the longer term as the producing sectors grow in importance and as the technology becomes more pervasive.     

Profiles of four top biotech companies in India

Serum Institute of India – India's top BioPharma company Biocon: Aiming for innovation leadership Rasi Seeds: Changing the face of India's bioagriculture India's iconic biotech company: Shantha Biotechnics     

Is Private Health Care the Answer to the Health Problems of the World's Poor?

Background to the debate: The global burden of disease falls disproportionately upon the world''s low-income countries, which are often struggling with weak health systems. Both the public and private sector deliver health care in these countries, but the appropriate role for each of these sectors in health system strengthening remains controversial. This debate examines whether the private sector should step up its involvement in the health systems of low-income countries.     

Indian entrepreneurship in biotechnology comes of age

Biotechnology is one of the fastest growing, knowledge-driven industries in India and is expected to play a key role in shaping India’s rapidly developing economy. Since its inception in 1986 the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has been guiding to foster growth of Indian biotechnology with a range of initiatives. Indian biotechnology industry registered over 3.0 billion USD revenue generation in 2009–10, which constitutes about 2 % share of the global biotechnology market. More than 300 companies are engaged in different biotechnology sectors in India, majority of which are clustered in western and southern regions. Biopharmaceuticals is the largest biotechnology sector in India with about 62 % market share. Bioservices ranked second due to the upward trend in a range of service oriented research activities. Bioagriculture recorded highest growth in 2009–10 and is dominated by insect resistant transgenic cotton. Bioindustrial, which deals with production of enzymes for different industrial uses, is the smallest biotechnology sector in India with 6 % revenue share.     

Microbial biotechnology

For thousands of years, microorganisms have been used to supply products such as bread, beer and wine. A second phase of traditional microbial biotechnology began during World War I and resulted in the development of the acetone-butanol and glycerol fermentations, followed by processes yielding, for example, citric acid, vitamins and antibiotics. In the early 1970s, traditional industrial microbiology was merged with molecular biology to yield more than 40 biopharmaceutical products, such as erythropoietin, human growth hormone and interferons. Today, microbiology is a major participant in global industry, especially in the pharmaceutical, food and chemical industries.     

The quality of health care in prison: results of a year's programme of semistructured inspections.

OBJECTIVES: To assess, as part of wider inspections by HM Inspectorate of Prisons, the extent and quality of health care in prisons in England and Wales. DESIGN: Inspections based on a set of "expectations" derived mainly from existing healthcare quality standards published by the prison service and existing ethical guidelines; questionnaire survey of prisoners. SUBJECTS: 19 prisons in England and Wales, 1996-7. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Appraisals of needs assessment and the commissioning and delivery of health care against the inspectorate''s expectations. RESULTS: The quality of health care varied greatly. A few prisons provided health care broadly equivalent to NHS care, but in many the health care was of low quality, some doctors were not adequately trained to do the work they faced, and some care failed to meet proper ethical standards. Little professional support was available to healthcare staff. CONCLUSIONS: The current policy for improving health care in prisons is not likely to achieve its objectives and is potentially wasteful. The prison service needs to recognise that expertise in the commissioning and delivery of health care is overwhelming based in the NHS. The current review of the provision of health care in prisons offers an opportunity to ensure that prisoners are not excluded from high quality health care.     

Patient waiting: care as a gift and debt in the Thai healthcare system

Drawing on fieldwork in Chiang Mai during 2010 and 2012, I examine poor Thais’ and Shan migrants’ experiences of receiving healthcare from a public hospital, and, in parallel, care from the state. While universal health coverage has become a way in which the state finds legitimacy in people's lives through giving care, being a recipient of state aid is implicated in the emotive domain of waiting. By focusing on how people feel and think of a gift and debt of care, I suggest that flows of affects that loom large in social interactions within the public hospital denote not only poor people's subordinate position but also their effort to achieve a sense of mutuality and moral autonomy. This study contributes to a broader understanding of experiences of paternalism, inequality, and dependence by illuminating people's agentive submission into relations of care.