South African economy "thirsty" for biotechnology
Christina Scott
Dr Jaleh Daie |
A noted American expert on biotechnology businesses says that new advances in this multi-billion-rand branch of science hold immense potential to
uplift the poorest South Africans, due to the commercialisation of
discoveries made by local researchers.
Jaleh Daie, a leading businesswoman and academic invited by South Africa's
PlantBio centre, says biotechnology - the science of harnessing Mother
Nature's molecules to improve products and our quality of life, whether it's
wine or the latest in personalised medicine - can work miracles for South
Africans on two different levels. She was visiting the Institute for Wine
Biotechnology at the University of Stellenbosch in late February after an
intensive tour of Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.
"South Africa, like any other country with a population of poor people,
must
focus on lifting people out of poverty. Biotechnology is a good way to do
that," said the Iran-born Dr Daie. "The AIDS vaccine is a crucial
example.
Developing food crops which resist insects or tolerate drought or
require less fertiliser, are technologies appropriate to the continent
of Africa."
The California-based businesswoman noted that biotechnology start-ups - for
example, the fledgling Stellenbosch company Sunbio, one of fifteen Western
Cape "baby biotechs" financially supported by taxpayers through
the
Cape Biotech Trust and designed to commercialise and utilise academic
discoveries - could provide a critical kickstart to South Africa's economic
growth as well as fight poverty.
"The two are not mutually exclusive: they are mutually beneficial. You
can
create a situation in which the business environment thrives and you create
private sector jobs, while at the same time biotechnology addresses issues
like disease prevention and food security and advances the human
condition."
Dr Daie believes the Western Cape - the source of more than half South
Africa's biotechnology start-up companies - has the potential to become
another Silicon Valley, the influential 50-mile-wide belt of hi-tech
industries in the western USA.
At a Cape Biotech business breakfast in Cape Town, "I
focused on issues that will help South Africa become a world-class hub of
the biotech industry," said Daie, a former university biology professor and
presidential science advisor who is active in philanthropy and business
circles. One of nine siblings, Dr Daie notes that she did not come from a
rich family and wants to encourage young South Africans, particularly women,
to use their greatest resource: their minds.
"South Africa has a lot of what it takes to be a global leader, although
there are a few disadvantages such as a lack of venture capital money
here,"
said Daie. "I see a lot of people put venture money into real estate, into
building a mall or into mining. You don't see them put the money in
non-traditional areas. That's a clear disadvantage."
Fadl Hendricks, chief executive officer of the non-profit Cape Biotech
Trust, said he supported Daie's view that biotechnology research could
impact positively on the regional economy, noting that since its inception
in 2001, the Cape Biotech Trust has invested in and encouraged science
businesses in
areas ranging from vaccine development and manufacturing, medical
diagnostics, drug delivery technologies such as heart stents,
bio-prospecting for useful chemicals from indigenous plants and
nutraceuticals such as beta carotene from algae.
* Biotechnology careers and the truth about cloning will be issues explored
by the Public Understanding of Biotechnology programme at South Africa's
upcoming national science festival, Sasol SciFest, which is due to bring 40
000 visitors to Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape from March 21 to 27.
In addition, SciFest is presenting "the mystery of the murdered
tree," which
will explore the detective work inherent in biotechnology when used to
protect indigenous trees from genetic havoc wreaked by fungus. The
exhibition is being presented by South Africa's centre of excellence in tree
health biotechnology and the tree protection co-operative programme at the
Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute.
Related SciFest exhibitors with a strong focus on research careers include
the non-profit International Union of Biological Science and South Africa's
national bioinformatics network, which uses the latest in computer science
to capture and understand vast amounts of data about how humans - and other
interesting biological specimens - function. Monica Mwale and Poogendri
Reddy of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity will be
offering learners from Grades 11 and 12 the chance to work as apprentices on
the mornings of March 22 and 26, while marine biologist Dr Nadine Strydom,
from the same institute, will be offering high school students and adults an
excursion along the Eastern Cape coastline for one day only during SciFest.
Also, the Centre for Molecular and Cellular Biology - a joint effort by the
University of Stellenbosch and the Medical Research Council - will be
showing how DNA (the genetic blueprint embedded in each of your cells) is
used to solve crimes such as murder as well as work out who the baby's
father really is. Valerie Corfield and Khalipha Ramahlape of the Centre for
Molecular and Cellular
Biology will also be using biotechnology in practice in their workshops for
primary students on "enzyme antics" and "HIV comes to the
party".
And if that's not enough, the zoology department students and staff from
Rhodes University will be running two afternoon demonstrations on March 23
and 26 in Grahamstown on "biological invasions" · For more on SciFest,
go
to www.scifest.org.za
More information:
Public Understanding of Biotechnology Programme -
PUB
Sasol Scifest
|
