Hyderabad, Feb 04, 2010: The seventh edition of the annual biotechnology trade show, “BioAsia 2010,” the global bio-business forum started on February 3, 2010 in Hyderabad.
The four-day ‘BioAsia-2010’ was inaugurated with the State Chief Minister Dr K Rosaiah announcing that leading companies proposed to invest $210 million to create infrastructure of plug-and-play lab space in the third phase of Biotech Park in the State.
The Chief Minister also unveiled a plaque to inaugurate Alexandria Center for Science and Innovation in Genome Valley, where the company will invest $108 million in the biotech cluster.
The other dignitaries present during the inauguration include Prof Seyed E Hasnain, Chairman, BioAsia 2010 Advisory Board and Vice Chancellor University of Hyderabad, Dr M K Bhan, Secretary Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, Kanna Lakshmi Narayana, Minister of Major Industries, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Joseph Huguet i Biosca, Minister of Innovation, Catalonia Government, Barcelona, Joel S Marcus, Chairman and CEO, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, USA, Dr Maive Rute, Director General, European Commission, Brussels.
Jointly organized by the Federation of Asian Biotech Associations (FABA), State Government of Andhra Pradesh (where Hyderabad is located), University of Hyderabad, and All India Biotech Association (AIBA), the event has the participation of over 2,000 delegates this year.
BioAsia, which is one of the largest biotech and life sciences event in South Asia, provides a platform for local and multinational companies to network, display their products and technologies, and interact with the delegates. The event this year has the presence of over 30 countries from US, Europe and Asia.
The event comprises four tracks and 24 technical sessions covering the areas of Medical Biotechnology, Biopharmaceuticals, Agribiotechnology and Animal Biotechnology. Apart from the conference sessions, the event is expected to have over 500 B2B meetings this year.
The other highlight of this year’s edition are Indo- European networking meetings, whitepapers on Public Private Partnerships in biotechnology and funding options for drug discovery.
Delivering the inaugural lecture, Dr M K Bhan, Secretary Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India said, “ BioAsia is an example of how connectivity can be built with companies and people coming from different parts of the world.” He stressed that the field of Biotechnology needs technologists driving entrepreneurship. He stated that the Indian government has been increasing its science budget by 30 percent each year and DBT has funded more than 120 companies in the last 12 months.
BioAsia which helped bring in more than $420 million investments in its last edition from companies like Lonza and Alexandria is looking to attract even more investments this year. The event this year aims to bring together US and European drug development companies with Asian biotech and pharmaceutical companies interested in research collaborations and licensing agreements.
Recognizing the need to reward the stalwarts in biotech, BioAsia presented Genome Valley Excellence Awards to Dr C R Rao, director, Center for Multivariate Analysis, Pennsylvania State University, USA for his research contribution to statistical methods to understand health and disease and Janet Thornton, director, EMBL European Bio-informatics Institute, Cambridge, UK for her outstanding contribution using computational methods in the understanding of protein structure and function.
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