News

Russian nano-industry: plans for 2008

The matters of scientific and organizational maintenance for Russian nano-industry have been considered at the meeting of the Russian Government on January 17, 2008.

In particular the Cabinet has discussed a program on nano-industry development which will be eventually adopted next March. The Government has set ambitious target: to create until 2015 a high-tech nano-industry sector; to reach 900 bln. Roubles in sales of domestic products; to get 3% share of the high-tech world market for the Russian products (while currently it is a scanty percentage).

Unfortunately, Russia has missed the time when the world revolution in informatics and biotechnology took place, so apparently Russia is going to perform a breakthrough in nanosphere. The Pesident V. Putin was first to mention it, he called nano-technologies as "the locomotive of science and technology strategy". Shortly after the Government has adopted an relative Federal Target Program and the State Corporation for nanotechnology has been established (the GK "Rosnanotech") .

130 bln. Roubles have been allocated to the GK "Rosnanotech" for development and funding the innovative projects. The following approach to the project financing is pursued: companies involved in research and manufacture in the field of nanotechnologies will be established based on state-private partnerships.That means if the private individuals provide 60-70% of the project financing the GK "Rosnanotech" will additionally finance the rest. When a company reach the payback level the state will voluntarily sell its share under the conditions specified when creating the company.

Chuvashia to launch the pilot project on biotechnology

December 14, 2007 the intergerional meeting with participation of leading Russian biotechnologists and their partners from Finland took place in the frame work of the International forum "Strategy and Practice of Successful Business" in Cheboksary.

Professor R.Vasilov, the President of the Yu.F. Ovchinnikov Russian Biotechnologists Society (Moscow), member of the Russian Academy, head of the Scientific Center in Puschino (Moscow) A. Miroshnikov and representative of the Finnish company IQlink G.Cheremisin participated in the discussion.

Opening the discussion R.Vasilov especially accentuated the role of biotechnology as a key structural element of the knowledge-based bioeconomy R.Vasilov outlined the milestones of biotechnology's development in medium- and long-term perspective. He stressed that biofuels (bioethanol) manufacturing is an especially promising field in Russia presently. The projects on bioethanol manufacturing are have been already launched in few Russian regions, including Omsk, Krasnodar, Volgograd and Tatarstan. R. Vasilov told, the oil-refining factories very soon will be partially replaced by biomass-refining factories.

Biofuels threatens the food supply in developing and poor nations ?

December 13, 2007 the Vice-president of the Russian National Biofuel Association Alex Ablaev and the President of the Yu.A.Ovchinnikov Russian Biotechnologists Society, the Chairman of Board of Directors of the Russian National Biofuel Association Raif Vasilov took part in the program "The personal opinion" of the broadcasting station "Radio of Russia".

They explained the latest food price spike in the world by the following reasons:
Firstly, a rise of food prices has been mainly provoked by increasing demand for corn and oil in China and India due to the growth of prosperity and correspondingly much more food consume.Secondly, over the last few years Argentina and Canada, the world's largest producers of crops, failed to produce enough crop.And only lastly, biofuels can be called the only the last reason driving up the food prices.

Five perspective trends in Russian biotechnology

- Immunomodulators and diagnostic test kits
- Functional food
- Pharmaceuticals
- Veterinary preparations
- Medical preparations for especially dangerous infections' treatment

(Sources: Ministry of Healthcare of RF, "Sanepidprom")

Russian medical biotechnologies development is hampered by the lack of the clear state policy

November 16, 2007 the Roundtable "Russian medical biotechnology: current state and perspective of further development" took place in the Collegium Hall of the Ministry of education and science of RF. The event was hosted by the Foundation "The Centre of economic researches and spreading of economic information "Opened economy".

The problems of technological platforms development in the field of medical biotechnology in Russia and future trends of the industry have been discussed. The speakers emphasized that the demand for the new platforms currently correlates with structure of social significant diseases such as tuberculosis and sexual transmitted diseases, cancer and cardio-vascular diseases. Speakers stressed also a necessity of setting up the nano-technologies based platforms providing early diagnosis and reliable prognosis and the opportunity to reveal the genome sites responsible for drug resistance.

Influence of biotechnology on today and future society

What influence does biotechnology have on the today's society and what position will it have reached in twenty years time? At the beginning of this year, 51 experts from science and industry came together to answer these and other questions. Their results have now been presented in a so-called "Cologne Paper" at the biotechnology conference "En Route to the Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy", which took place under the umbrella of the German European Council Presidency on 30 May in Cologne.

Further proof that food products from GM-fed animals are equivalent to conventional counterparts

According to a recent study by the Council for Agricultural Science & Technology (CAST), an international consortium of 38 scientific and professional societies, products from Genetically Modified (GM) fed animal are sources of high-quality food and are equivalent to their conventional counterparts.

BIO-Asia 2008

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) announced the fifth annual BIO-Asia Partnering Conference, January 28-29, 2008, in Tokyo, Japan at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

FAO has settled web pages on biotechnology and supports science based evolution system that would objectively determine the benefits and risks of each individual GMO (http://www.fao.org). This calls for a cautions case by case approach to address legitimate concerns for biotechnology of each product or process prior to its release . However FAO is also aware of the concern about the potential risks passed by several aspects of biotechnologies.

GERMANY: Pharmaceuticals Initiative launched

Biotechnology is already of enormous importance in terms of the development of medicines. In 2006 medicines from biotech labs accounted for 12 per cent of overall turnover in the pharmaceuticals industry in Germany . That corresponds to a sales volume of 3.1 billion euros. In addition, nowadays there is hardly a conventional pharmaceutical development in which biotechnology is not involved in some way or other.