KOSEN 한인과학기술자네트워크

* National Research Council Canada(Conseil national de recherches Canada)의 연례보고서 및 각종 Brochure The year 2000 has been called the 'dawn of the Biotech Century' by industry experts. It witnessed one of the key events in the life sciences and a bellwether of the industry's future - the June completion of the first draft of the human genome. The commercial interest generated by this, in concert with the continued expansion in the portfolio of biotech drugs and vaccines on the market (over 110 currently, with upwards of 300 in late-stage clinical trials) led to biotechnology's most successful year ever in attracting investment on the public markets. In the U.S. alone, biotech companies raised $24 billion in IPOs and follow-up offerings on the strength of genomics and the record 21 new biotech drugs approved by the U.S. FDA for everything from heart attacks, high cholesterol and cancer to diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy. This is just short of the total raised by the industry during the entire decade of the 1990s ($26 billion). Experts view genomics and its follow-up, proteomics, as the key reason for investor confidence in biotechnology and a major engine of growth in the health, agriculture and environmental sectors of the economy. In the health sector, stem cell research is producing advances in neuron degenerating conditions such as Alzhimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and reversing damage from paralysis injuries. Gene therapy is being used to treat inherited diseases like cystic fibrosis and hemophilia, while monoclonal antibody technology's specificity is being directed at breast cancer and inflammatory bowel diseases. In agriculture, despite concerns, over 100 million acres of GM food (canola, corn, cotton, soybeans, potatoes) are now under cultivation (over 80% in the U.S. and Canada) with total revenues of over $3 billion in 2000. While most of these genetic modifications involved pesticide and herbicide resistance, a landmark transformation of rice to include vitamin A in its genome promises to protect Third World children against blindness and adults against anemia. Bananas transformed to include vitamin E are on the horizon. In the environmental sector, a growing industry aims at sustainable development by using such techniques as modified microorganisms to convert waste biomass to energy and metabolize intractable organic and inorganic gollutants, and plants to scavenge heavy metals from soils. In the United States, the world's largest biotechnology industry, there are now upwards of 1,300 biotech companies, with more and more of them finally becoming profitable. Over the year, they generated total revenues of over $20 billion (rising to $42 billion with revenues of the industry s service firms) and they spent over $11 billion on research and develpment. During this same period, the total market capitalization of 300 publicly traded companies jumped from $137-9 billion to $353.5 billion over the year. In Europe, there has been equally significant growth in the industry over the year despite generalized Green Party opposition, with the number of companies jumping by 173 to a total of 1351. Across the continent, the industry tends to be uneven, with Germany having the most companies, though most are small, and the UK having about two thirds of the industry's total value. Biotechnology revenues increased by 45% to 5.4 billion Euro over the year, due mainly to alliances with Big Pharma. This is in sharp contrast to the U.S., where vast infusions of investment dollars have in many cases freed biotech companies from selling off their IP and allowed them to pursue their drug development through to registration alone. In Canada, biotechnology enjoyed a similar, albeit proportionally smaller, burst of growth to that of the U.S. industry during the year. In 2000, Cnadian biotechnology was in a virtual tie with the UK as the world's second largest industry, with over 370 firms from coast to coast, concentrated in Quebec and Ontario (40% apeice). The annual revenues of the industry topped $2 billion, with R&D spending just upwards of $1 billion. Most of the revenues and research spending were in the health and agri-food sectors, reflecting the fact that three quarters of Canada's biotech companies are in these sectors. There are now about 90 publicly traded Canadian biotechnology companies. To support biotechnology's leading edge, the Canadian government provided $160 million in its 2000 budget for genomics research funding through Genome Canada. Currently, there are 35-40 start-up companies conducting genomics R&D across Canada, particularly in Montreal which continues to rank as one of the ten largest pharmaceutical/biotechnology centres in North America. Over the quarter century of biotechnology's relatively short existence, one quarter of a billion people have benefited from the more than 100 drugs and vaccines produced in the industry's laboratories. Today, genomics, proteomics and information science are transforming biotechnology, further strengthening its capacity to accelerate development in the health, agriculture and environmental industries.