Bio Asia 2006 promises to be great show

The third edition of Bio Asia-2006, an annual global bio business forum sponsored by the government of Andhra Pradesh, which will be held here from February 9 to 11, 2006, promises much this time in terms of business partnership and research besides a bigger trade show, according to organisers.

About 50 exhibitors, 500 delegates and 60 internationally acclaimed speakers besides 15,000 visitors from 33 leading biotech countries are expected to take part in the three-day event.

A special session titled 'Nurturing entrepreneurship in biotechnology', sponsored by The Indus Entrepreneurs(TiE), more structured meetings on business-to-business marketing to be handled by an American company are among the new features being added to the event this time.

Addressing a curtain-raiser press conference on the Bio Asia-2006 here on Wednesday, J Geeta Reddy, minister for industries and tourism, and B P Acharya, president of the organising committee, said that the event would showcase the Genome Valley, the hub of biotech research and manufacturing in Hyderabad, as a model and would also attract more and more companies to start operations and collaborations from the city.

Coinciding with the event, Albany Molecular Research, Inc, the US-based drug discovery and development company, will be announcing the establishment of its research facility at the ICICI Knowledge Park in the city.

According to Utkarsh Palnitkar of Ernst & Young, apart from setting up a research centre at the Knowledge Park, the American company was also planning to construct its own facility in the S P Biotec Park in the city. The company conducts research and development projects and collaborates with various pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and genomic companies.

In an indication of growing importance of Hyderabad in bio initiative, three more countries, Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh, have recently joined the Federation of Asian Biotech Association (FABA), which was essentially an initiative of Bio Asia event, B S Bajaj, chairman of All India Biotech Association disclosed at the press meet. With the new entrants, the total number of member countries in FABA has increased to 13, he said.