Argentina’s Annual Ag Expo

Posted on 31 Mar 2014 by Mariana Aris

During March 22-25 the main farming event in Argentina, Expoagro 2014, took place in Santa Fe state, and recent advances in agriculture and farming were highlighted. Farming is the main economic activity of Argentina, and biotechnology has played a central role in farm development and transitioning to a more precise form of agriculture. Local policies have allowed the use of genetically modified organisms, and that led to a green revolution in the 1990s, with incremental increases in productivity, as well as the development of fertilizers, biofuels, bioplastics and other by-products, all of which have significantly increased economic output levels per cultivated area.

Both national and multinational companies were present at ExpoAgro 2014. The star of the event was RR2Bt transgenic soy, called the super soy, a GM crop tolerant to glyphosate and glufosinate ammonium herbicides and resistant to lepidopteran insects. Ninety percent of the total seeded soy in Argentina makes use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and super soy was first used in northern Argentina, where there were more difficulties in controlling undergrowth and plagues.

Now it is used in the Pampa, an area characterized by its rich soil. The super soy would lower the cost of production and increase the crop’s performance and profitability. NIDERA, a multinational corporation that has recently fused to the Chinese COFCO, has established a seed division in Argentina that presented at the meeting an improved RR2Bt transgenic soy, as well as corn and wheat. The local company Don Mario also presented new soy seeds, including RR2Bt. Other interesting biotech approaches showcased at the event included using tricoderma fungi as a pesticide for controlling plague in seeds. This proposal came from a private-public interaction between Rizobacter and the National Agricultural Technology Institute, INTA. In fact, seed fertilizing was offered as a service by several companies at the event, including the use of microbial fertilizers.

Expoagro 2014 is a meeting point for farmers, producers, investors, foreign visitors, and even politicians. The possibility of using genetic-engineering techniques in agriculture and farming in Argentina has proved its potential – that much was clear from Expoagro.

Mariana Aris

The Problem with Greece

Posted on 25 Mar 2014 by Iordanis Arzimanoglou

The public purse.

Greece’s economic crisis that started at the end of 2009 – which has increased unemployment from 10% (2009) to 27.5% (last quarter of 2013), and decreased GDP in millions of euros from 231.081 (2009) to 182.054 (2013) – has had a moderate negative impact on the country’s R&D and its ability to innovate, compared to other sectors. Spending on research and innovation is stuck at around 0.5%. Given that most research money in Greece comes from the public purse, the current fiscal constraints mean it is impossible to boost spending to more than 1% of GDP. This means that the only way to grow R&D spending is for the private sector to step in and invest in highly selected R&D projects that have serious possibility to lead to high added-value exportable products and/or services and thus ignite the real economy. There have been a couple of instances where this has happened – BIC (disposable pens, razors) expanded its global research centre near Athens, and a few Greek pharmas have intensified generic drug development – but mostly this seems unlikely.

For us who are serving the small and fragmented biotech sector in Greece, the crisis may turn out to be an opportunity. However, there are interesting questions to consider: Will there be a renaissance of the biotech/pharma sector after the crisis, or are we getting closer to a definitive government decision that this sector is unlikely to be one of the key areas for development? What are the elements needed to boost the commercialization efforts of Greek bioresearch? What role can Greek universities and research centers play? Greek pharma companies currently heavily invest in generics; is this a real opportunity for Greece? How can the Greek-American bioentrepreneurs get involved in the process?

Although we often ask ourselves questions like these, hoping to find information that would enable us to more effectively lobby for biotech funding, there is not always comprehensive data from which to draw conclusions.

I’m currently strategic advisor to Genomedica, primary tasked with establishing critical R&D biopartners in personalized medicine. I’ve been working in the biomedical and innovation field for more than twenty years. With Athina Ikonomidou, a business development and technology transfer consultant specializing in biotechnology, we plan to write about the advantages Greek biotech has, as well as its obstacles, and to investigate these questions. More to come.

Iordanis Arzimanoglou

Failing To Control Earth’s CO2

Posted on 19 Mar 2014 by Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro

The threat of rising ocean levels.

The whole world gathered in Copenhagen recently for the XV COP for Climatic Changes. On the agenda was how to cope with the rise in CO₂ emissions, which, in addition to ocean acidification, could elevate the ocean level as much as 60 cm by the end of the century. This will jeopardize those living on islands and along shorelines – it’s estimated 100 million people may be menaced. In fact, humans are pumping 7 Gt of CO₂in the atmosphere yearly. The level of CO₂in the atmosphere today is around 370 ppm – according to specialists, it needs to remain below 420 ppm through the end of this century to keep global warming below 2^oC. Most solutions to reduce this trend are not short-term ones. An integrated approach to carbon abatement in the automotive sector could reduce global passenger vehicle greenhouse emissions by 2.2 Gt by 2030, much of it using proven technologies. Sugarcane-based ethanol produced in Brazil on 8 million Ha can be substantially increased, but that must be done without harming the environment. The ethanol produced from 200 million tons of corn in the US will help reduce greenhouse emission by car. Together both countries supply today only a fraction of what will be needed to replace the automotive fossil fuel in years to come.

This means abatement will not come from first-generation biofuels alone, but from a combination of second generation biofuel, traffic flow shifts and a mix of several other technologies. Carbon capture and storage can handle a few million metric tons of CO₂ /year, while 6 billion metric tons of coal are burned each year, producing 18 billion tons of CO₂.

Brazil hopes to revert deforestation in the Amazon that in the last decades claimed an area larger than Germany, according to the National Institute of Air Space – INPE. To accomplish this, the National Plan of Climatic Changes in Brazil was presented in Copenhagen, and it included efforts to achieve reforestation by 2020. This is a costly and long-term effort.

But deforestation is not a problem of the tropical forest alone. The vegetation of other ecosystem have been drastically reduced. There is just 7% of the original vegetation of Mata Atlântica left. The “Cerrado” is being destroyed at a rate of 0.5% a year. Inadequate use of this biome, for ethanol production, for instance, could destroy the 17% remaining of the Cerrado.

So what can be done if the level of CO2 cannot be kept under control? Geo-engineering proposes simulated volcanic eruptions to reduce the planet temperature and the level of ocean rise, based upon observations made after Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in June 1991. The eruption injected 10 Tg S in the stratosphere which caused detectable short-term cooling of the planet. One simulated injection of SO2 as an aerosol precursor equivalent to the Mount Pinatubo eruption every two years would cool the planet and consequently keep the sea level rise below 20 cm for centuries ahead, although the (relatively less deadly) ocean acidification due to CO₂ would persist.

I attended several discussions on this subject where most people accepted this fate, like lambs to the slaughterhouse. I proposed a strategy to desalinize sea water for irrigation or as a source of potable water where water is needed most: arid regions of developing countries. If the ocean level rises at a rate of 6 mm/year and since oceans occupy 360 x 10⁶ million Km², the amount of water to be desalinized is 2.16 x 10¹² m³. Considering that there is at least 10% of arid regions in the planet, this amount of water corresponds to only 14 mm of rain falling in 15 million square km².

So the amount of desalinized water from ocean rise alone may be insufficient to irrigate adequately large areas. Desalinized water could also be stored in reservoirs and underground aquifers. Potable water is scarce in many regions of the world, particularly in the Sub Sahara. Lack of good quality potable water threatens today the lives of 1.1 billion, according to UNEP worldwide, due to infections resulting from unclean drinking water. Throughout most of the world, the most common contamination of raw water sources is from human sewage and in particular human faecal pathogens and parasites. In 2006, waterborne diseases were estimated to cause 1.8 million deaths each year, while about 1.1 billion people lacked proper drinking water. Thus, it is clear that people in the developing world need to have access to good quality water in sufficient quantity, be able to purify water and distribute it.

Most desalination plants yield around 10⁷ m³ of desalinized water annually, in recent years. Alternative technologies may be needed to allow for desalination of 2.16 x 10¹² m³/year, the equivalent to 6mm of ocean rise/year. A project alone that desalinizes water from the Red Sea in Jordan has the capacity to produce 850 million m3 of desalinated water/year. That’s 10 times the yields of the recent past and the cost will be more than $10 billion but will benefit Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation of Jordan, the project may need to gather funds of close to $40 billion for its complete implementation; this is achievable if additional bidders come aboard.

The project will stand as a symbol of peace and cooperation in the Middle East. One project alone yielding 8.5 times 10 to the eight means 10,000 projects of this magnitude are needed. Ted Levin from the Natural Resources Defense Council says that more than 12,000 desalination plants already supply fresh water in 120 nations, mostly in The Middle East and Caribbean. The market for desalination according to analysts will grow substantially over the next decades.

Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro

Biotech from the end of the world

Posted on 13 Mar 2014 by Emilia Díaz

Creating a biotechnology company in Chile is bound to be a bittersweet experience. On one hand, we’ve recently become an entrepreneurial paradise, ranking 20 in Entrepreneur’s “World’s hottest startup scenes,” and thus making us the only country in Latin America to actually be featured in the ranking. Pretty impressive for a country that has one of the lowest investment in research and development and innovation (R+D+I) in the region, if you ask me. On the other hand, this entrepreneurial paradise tends to welcome only fast-working projects, also known as apps, and biotech gets pushed into the background. Biotechnology is not even featured in the country’s strong research and development thematic categories for this year. Knowing this, does creating a biotechnology-based company even make sense in Chile?

Well, we entrepreneurs don’t get called crazy for nothing.

I’ve been through heaven and hell creating my company. As an entrepreneur, you already get judged on everything: career, manner of speaking, looks, income, etc. – oh, and also your project, at some point. But as a science entrepreneur, or more specifically, a bioentrepreneur, more things come into play, and not in a nice way – at least for me. I’m a 22-year-old undergrad who took a leave of absence from college to pursue my dream project, creating an R+D+I biotech company that will finally provide science made in Chile. Nobody took me seriously at first. As a student, one would think I at least had the support of my faculty, but apparently the school of engineering is not ready to house student-entrepreneurs. Being young and bringing a new approach doesn’t work in biological sciences as well as it does in computer science. And it’s even worse if you’re a woman. We may be on the tip of the wave when it comes to metabolic pathways and systems biology, but science is still hasn’t shaken its old sexist judgment of the female mind.

You may think the picture I’ve painted is enough to prevent people from trying. But after you power through the initial disillusionment and scratch the surface, what’s inside doesn’t disappoint.

On the last two years, respectively the year of Entrepreneurship (2012) and the year of Innovation (2013) in Chile, an amazing amount of contests and founding opportunities have sprouted from seemingly out of nowhere. New biotech companies founded by students or recent grads are starting to fill the national scenario, giving more and more students the push they need to know that yes, it’s possible. Younger people with fresh ideas are finally being taken seriously, and their projects are being listened to as carefully as a post-doc’s. Public funding is now accessible to anyone with a good idea and a tenacious working plan. Private companies are slowly starting to open up to new projects pitched by overexcited students. Suddenly, a near future with national science, and especially national biotechnology, is more than possible.

It appears as if, little by little, the country is realizing that anyone can have a life-changing idea – even a 22-year-old-girl with a tiny biotech company at the end of the world.

Emilia Díaz

Monthly Map

Posted on 10 Mar 2014 by Bioentrepreneur

Three of the five bits of international news from our March Monthly Map deal with funding. See if you can find them. (Click to make bigger.)

A Tale of Two Systems (Part I)

Posted on 07 Mar 2014 by Sandra Pitta

The title of this blog post has a few interpretations. The most obvious one is that I will be referring to two scientific systems that should be working together smoothly, but that somehow are as distant as the London and Paris of Dickens’ imagination. Another interpretation is that, in true Dickensian 19^th century style, my blogging on this topic will be divided into installments. Ideally, each installment will catch the eye of the wandering reader and spur his/her curiosity for future information. It worked for Dickens and Jules Verne, so I´m betting it will work for me too, even if it is the 21^st century.

To follow on a literary note, recently a Brazilian colleague reminded me of Ana Karenina´s opening lines: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I would have to disagree with dear Tolstoy on that, particularly as far as the scientific family is concerned. Dysfunctional scientific families around the world have many similarities. I am convinced that if anybody outside Argentina reads this blog, he/she will be able to identify with many of the situations I will be describing.

The two systems in this narration are the public and the private ones in Argentina. But first, some background on each of them. I will be dedicating this first installment to CONICET, the public side of this feud that shouldn´t exist.

CONICET stands for The National Scientific and Technical Research Council, and although it is not the only public organization involved in research activities, it is certainly the main one in the area of basic science. CONICET was founded in 1958, and its first president was Bernardo Houssay. Dr Houssay was a daunting character. A pharmacist at age 17, he went on to study medicine and won the coveted Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1947 for his discovery of the role played by pituitary hormones in regulating glucose. He was not only the first Argentinean to win a Nobel Prize in science, but also the first Latin American to do so. His personality was bigger than life, and it was that personality that modeled and permeated the entire Argentine scientific system; his influence is perceived even today. CONICET fulfilled Houssay´s life-long dream. Scientific endeavors would cease to be secondary activities or hobbies to be indulged in by professors only after complying with their teaching duties. Rather, scientists would be professionals dedicated exclusively to pursuing research. CONICET became a beacon of light in Latin American sciences.

However, Houssay´s virtues and flaws would be CONICET´s virtues and flaws for many years to come. CONICET is home to the best and the brightest in Argentine science. It is devoted, rigorous and demanding. Its scientists are highly qualified and recognized worldwide, and they work on subjects and issues that are at the forefront of world science. But CONICET also selects somewhat arbitrarily the best and the brightest, the topics it favors are not necessarily in line with the country’s needs and its devotion to basic science has become more a liability than an advantage.

Fortunately, many things are changing, slowly but steadily. Twenty years ago the mere mention of applied science was anathema, and the CONICET researcher who dared tread upon such new ground was treated as a traitor. Even worse, he was treated as a mere mortal! The Ivory Tower was challenged timidly in the ’80s and ’90s, and there were modifications, but CONICET stalwartly opposed any real ideological turnover. However, after Argentina’s gigantic economic crisis in 2001-2002, the CONICET scientific community was ready for an extreme makeover. Words that were once infamous, such as profits and patents and tech transfer and bioeconomy, slowly inched their way into regular use by the community. I truly cannot assert that this new mentality has crystallized, but undoubtedly several like-thinking minds are working together on this. They represent a new generation of researchers who understand the importance of transferring knowledge and the outcomes promise to be fruitful (more on this in future blogs). Of course, Argentina is a country that thrives on dichotomies, so now we have the basic science vs. applied science battle, but what I really think is at stake is this: how to perfect the loop of basic feeding applied feeding basic feeding…well, you get the picture.

I had the honor of being inducted into this Temple of Knowledge in 2002. (Though the opinions expressed here are fully my own.) Being a CONICET researcher is equivalent to having tenure, with the advantage that you can choose whatever lab tickles your fancy. Well, it’s not as simple and straightforward as that. Suffice it to say that it is supposed to work that way, but there are many hurdles along the way. My area of expertise is plant biotechnology, and 2011 found me working in INTA, which is the National Institute for Agricultural Technology. The relationship INTA-CONICET is another Tale of Two Systems, paradoxically immersed in the public system, but that is fodder for a different post. While at INTA, I received an offer from a well-known private university in Buenos Aires, and I decided to accept it. The offer, the reasons for my acceptance and the consequences my decision brought will be the subject of the second installment. I can only say this: I soon realized that the tunnel across the English Channel was not yet completed, and getting from Dover to Calais and back would take a lot of energy, perseverance and hope.

Sandra Pitta

The Right Reason for Entrepreneurship

Posted on 03 Mar 2014 by Bioentrepreneur

Are you hoping to build something? Consider your reasons.

With academia and industry now sharing closer ties than ever before, young scientists may dream of turning their research into startups. But what should motivate these entrepreneurial aspirations?

At a discussion I attended during the recent Global Young Scientists Summit 2014 in Singapore, a panel of distinguished scientists with industry experience felt that researchers should go into business because they think their work will benefit society, not because they want to get rich.

Chaired by Professor Bertil Andersson, President of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, the panel comprised Nobel Laureates Dr. Richard Roberts (Physiology or Medicine, 1993), Professor Harald zur Hausen (Physiology or Medicine, 2008), and Professor Kurt Wüthrich (Chemistry, 2002), Fields Medallist Professor Stephen Smale (1966), and Millennium Technology Prize winner Professor Michael Grätzel (2010).

For Roberts, starting biotech company New England Biolabs (NEB) in 1974 stemmed from practical, rather than financial, reasons. At the time, he found himself inundated with requests from other laboratories for the restriction enzymes he had been isolating from bacteria. He set up the company to handle the distribution of the enzymes and intended for its profits to go back toward funding more research.

“I think you can get into (business) for many reasons. Most people get into it because they want to become rich, and I think this is absolutely the wrong motivation. You should do it because you think it’s going to be useful to society in some way – in my case it enabled a biotech revolution, so I was very happy with that,” said Roberts, who is now NEB’s chief scientific officer.

The panel also emphasized the importance of basic research, even if its applications are not immediately obvious. Zur Hausen, whose discovery that human papilloma viruses cause cervical cancer enabled the development of a vaccine against the disease, said that he has always considered himself a basic researcher. When he first approached companies to persuade them to develop a vaccine, no one was interested because their market research at the time had yielded far from encouraging results. Today, however, the market for cervical cancer drugs and diagnostics is valued at around $11.6 billion, and the sale of the Merck’s Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine crossed the $1 billion mark in 2007.

For all would-be entrepreneurs out there, where should one look for inspiration? Citing the example of next-generation sequencing, Roberts said that the rise of a new paradigm, or a new way of doing things, often sparks a proliferation of novel technologies that could potentially be taken to market.

When an audience member suggested that some fields of research do not lend themselves well to commercialization, Roberts disagreed. “My own feeling is that very often, when you’re doing your own research, if you run into problems and you think, Well, how do you solve this problem? Is there some new technique or some new methodology that would help me to solve this problem? This gives you the basis right there and then for thinking about how it could be commercialized, if you wanted to go that way,” he said.

Sim Shuzhen

Trade Secrets

a blog from Nature Biotechnology

Monthly Archives: March 2014