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Taiwan National Biotech Park Set to Open in April 2016

2015/03/05 | By Ken Liu

Taiwan's National Biotech Research Park, the island's first government-invested integrated biotech park incorporating research, development and startup incubation capacity, will open in April 2016, according to Academia Sinica President C.H. Wong, whose organization came up with the idea for the project.

The park, calling for over NT$22 billion (US$709.67 million) in investment, has been under construction for four years and occupies 25.31 hectares of the 202 Munitions Works in Nangang District, northern Taiwan, an area with lots of wetland.

Wong says the park will hold around 110 incubation units and biotech institutes run by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), Academia Sinica, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, to create over 4,000 high-end research jobs initially after formal startup, also predicting the demand on the incubation capacity by the tenants at the park to surge quickly.

Wong says that the park is fully equipped to handle almost every step in technological development of a biomedical product before clinical trials, backed by the basic capabilities to develop several new medicines.

The park will select tenants with in-house capabilities to develop innovative, high value-added products to benefit Taiwan's biotechnology industry and build self-reliance, says Wong.

Industry executives, in light of the strong government support and as-planned development of the project, feel the park will facilitate Taiwan's biotech industry upon startup.

Wong predicts the island's biotech industry to make notable progress in two years, with its anticancer drugs having posted several achievements, noting Taiwan has over 100 drugs undergoing clinical trials, including 20-plus new drugs entering third stage trials.

Anticancer drugs aside, some local biomedical companies are developing drugs for diseases typically regarded as "incurable" as dementia and Parkinson's.

Wong points out that on the 2014 rankings of the world's most competitive biotech powers compiled by Scientific American, an American popular science magazine, Taiwan was ranked  No. 17, up from 2012's No. 21, leading even Japan and Israel.

Taiwan's Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) predicts the park to achieve snowball effect to draw investment of around NT$10 billion a year and spur annual growth of 30 percent in biotech transfer and incubation developments upon startup in 2016.

(KL)