Chairman Phan Van Hieu of the Vietnam Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Natural Active Ingredients shared that modern biotechnology focuses mostly on developing new treatment methods for rare and complex diseases as well as medical tests to identify genetic diseases more accurately.
Thanks to advanced technologies such as creating biological polymer or new-generation biological products for functional food, clinical trials which used to be manual and time-consuming can now be done more quickly, and thus the commercialization of research results takes only 2-5 years.
Dr. Bui Dinh Thach from the Institute of Tropical Biology informed that the application of biotechnology in healthcare is now divided into 4 groups of biopharmaceuticals where formulas and ingredients of drugs are obtained from plants, animals, and microorganisms; pharmacogenomics where medicines are produced according to the genetic structure of each patient; molecular diagnostics with techniques like recombinant DNA technology, polymerase chain reaction, or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; gene therapy used to treat genetic disorders thanks to the help of retrovirus, adenovirus, virus herpes simplex virus.
HCMC aims at turning biotechnology into a key technical-economic sector and effectively implementing biotechnology in the medical field. The HCMC People’s Committee has assigned the Management Board of Saigon Hi-tech Park (SHTP) to expand the site so that by 2030, it will have become an international-level hi-tech park observing the model of a scientific-technological park, with a strong focus on biotechnology.
In SHTP, there will be more research and development for bio-medicine, foods derived from herbs, vaccines, new disease diagnosis procedures, new disease treatments and medicine testing using stem cells, and gene decoding to create a database on Vietnamese human genome.
Deputy Head Le Quoc Cuong of SHTP’s Management Board said that his unit is cooperating with both domestic and foreign businesses specialized in applying advanced technologies in the pharmaceutical field and in biotechnology. At present, SHTP is running 161 projects having an investment certificate, 27 of which are in the biotechnology field with a total investment amount of over US$1.2 billion.
“Thanks to Resolution No.98/2023/QH15 about piloting a number of specific mechanisms and policies for the growth of HCMC, my unit has proposed several policies to boost the development of biotechnology in the city under the model of 3-partner collaboration, where SHTP works with Vietnam National University-HCM, other academies and corresponding businesses. The three partners use their close cooperation to create high-quality biotechnological products”, stressed Deputy Head Cuong.
