This week’s Net hauls in a new report on the state of the global biotech industry, start-up incentives in St. Louis (USA), a new resource for licensing and, predictably, seaweed.

* The global biotech market is poised to exceed $320 billion by 2015, according to a new report by GIA. The US is still the big fish in the pond, followed by the UK, France, Germany and Spain. India and China are highlighted as key emerging markets for biotech drugs due to their rich talent pool and low cost of investment. Read more here.

* In a bid to encourage cross-boundary licensing, the World Intellectual Property Organization will now allow PCT applicants interested in making their patent applications available for licensing to list the information on the agency’s PATENTSCOPE website. Applicants can include licensing terms and state which countries are available for licensing. Go to the site. 

* Business leaders in St. Louis, Missouri, are banding together to bring more start-ups, including biotechs, to the “Gateway to the West.” Arch Grants will give fledgling businesses cash, discounted housing and office space and access advisers and professional services from local firms. Here’s the article.

* Finally, (sea)green biotech company Bio Architecture Lab hopes it has found a better biomass feedstock. The Berkeley, California start-up, along with its subsidiaries in Chile, hopes a modified strain of E. coli can enable high ethanol yields from seaweed. Read more about BAL here.

Our biweekly roundup of news for those with a bioentrepreneurial bent kicks off in 2012 with stops in China, Japan and Panama. If you feel like we’ve missed something important in your corner of the world, please post a link to the article in the comments.

* SmartPlanet introduces us to one of China’s fast-rising biotechs, Beijing-based biochip company CapitalBio. The 10-year-old company employs 500 staff and recently inked a 100 million RMB (about $US 15 million) contract to provide Beijing’s city government with biochip diagnosis kits to screen all of the city’s newborn babies for a potentially deafness-causing allergy to antibiotics. Though rightly bullish about his company’s prospects, CapitalBio CEO Jing Cheng is also unusually candid about the challenges faced by Chinese biotechs, including the country’s bureaucratic healthcare system and massive brain drain problem, resulting in an urgent shortage of talent. Read it here.

* With the rise of biotech in Asia comes an increased demand for cell culture media. According to Genetic Engineering News, Irvine Scientific’s recently opened 18,500 square-foot cell culture media manufacturing facility in Tokyo will serve the growing demand for media in Japan and elsewhere in Asia, and to provide “redundancy” with its 75,000 square-foot facility in Santa Ana, California.  Full article here.

* The Nagoya Protocol Implementation Fund (NPIF), started last year to support projects in developing countries that promote access to and sharing of the benefits of biodiversity, has chosen its first grant recipient— a joint venture between the government of Panama, research institutions and private sector companies that will develop a database on biodiversity and natural products. The NPIF will contribute $1 million to the $4.4 million, three-year project.  Click here for more.