Hyderabad all set for BioAsia 2006

BioAsia 2006, Asia's premier biotechnology event hosted by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, will be held from February 9-11, 2006 in Hyderabad. The three-day global bio business forum will be inaugurated by Dr Y S Rajashekar Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh.

BioAsia 2006 is expected to attract over 50 exhibitors, 500 conference delegates, 60 internationally acclaimed speakers and 15,000 visitors. Delegations from 33 leading biotech countries are anticipated to participate in the event. Dr MK Bhan, secretary, DBT, Dr William Haseltine, former CEO, Human Genome Sciences, Dr NK Ganguly, director general, ICMR, Nandini Tandon, MDS Capital, USA, Dr Werner Koerbitz, consultant, Austrian Biofuels Institute, Dr Antal K Hajos, managing director, ALTANA Pharma Private Ltd, Dr B Balke, CEO, MDL, and Dr Gurinder Shahi, director, Global Bio Business Initiative, University of Southern California, are some of the prominent guests speakers for the BioAsia conference. The event will see delegations from countries like Greece, Finland, and Holland participate for the first time in the event.

"The success of the earlier two editions of BioAsia has given Hyderabad and the state of Andhra Pradesh as a whole, a tremendous impetus to become the biotech capital of the country. In an attempt to take forward this success, BioAsia 2006 has included some interesting modules and also entered into strategic partnerships," said BP Acharya, chairman, organizing committee, BioAsia 2006.

A special session titled "Nurturing Entrepreneurship in Biotechnology" sponsored by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) will feature prominent VCs like East west Capital Partners, JP Morgan Partners and MDS Capital who will share their expectations to the entrepreneurial community on making business ideas a reality.

This year there will also be a focused session on "Leveraging Logistics to Enhance Biotech and Pharma Industry Competitiveness" that would be hosted by Prof. N Viswanadham, executive director, Centre for Global Logistics & Manufacturing Strategies, Indian School of Business. The objective of the session is to discover how logistics can indeed be a differentiating factor. "The supply chain networks in the pharma and biotech industries do not command the cost efficiencies of hi-tech or consumer good supply chains since logistics and supply chain best practices aspects are not given adequate attention in these industries," said Prof. Viswanadham.

BioAsia 2006 in partnership with Technology Vision Group LLC will also facilitate "Business Forum" by conducting one-to-one meetings for collaboration, strategic alliances, business development, and outsourcing. Participants in BioAsia 2006 can browse through www.biopartnering.com and prepare for private meetings with potential partners before attending the conference. Through this unique feature, subscribers to this service can access the password protected area of the site and explore research partnering opportunities accessing detailed profiles on all companies and contact other users and schedule private meetings and reserve meeting space at an event. "There have been close to 85 registrations on biopartnering as of now, out of which 28 are foreign companies," said a member of this initiative.

"The Andhra Pradesh government has been using the BioAsia events as a platform to recognize and acknowledge the outstanding efforts of distinguished scientists in the life sciences sector by honoring them with an award, the Genome Valley Excellence Award. This year Prof. Rama Reddy V Guntaka, Department of Molecular Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN will be conferred the prestigious Genome Valley Excellence Award for his outstanding contribution in the field of biotechnology," said Dr A Ashok, director of biotechnology, Government of Andhra Pradesh.

This year's global bio forum is also expected to witness an active participation of state governments. Representatives from seven states across the country including Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttaranchal, and the host state, Andhra Pradesh, will come together to discuss the development of bioclusters in India during the BioParks session on
the opening day.

Commenting on the remarkable success achieved by the state in biotechnology, Utkarsh Palnitkar, industry leader, Health Science, Ernst & Young, said, "Several multinational life sciences companies have chosen Genome Valley after evaluating various destinations in India. Some of the leading companies who have set up shop in the Genome Valley in the last 12 months are USP, Nektar Therapeutics and AMRI. It is expected that these three companies alone will create 300 jobs in Hyderabad." And BioAsia 2006 is expected to push these investments further in the state. It may be recalled that the second edition of the three-day pan-Asia biotechnology conference held from February 10-12, 2005 in Hyderabad ended on a positive note with the signing of 27 MoUs. This clearly underlined the fact that there is a tremendous potential for countries to initiate joint research and development activities and simultaneously establish effective trading links to expand operations.