The Hong Kong Government should invest in infrastructure and manpower to nurture the biotechnology industry, according to a local venture-capital firm.
Kitty Lo, managing director of biotechnology incubator Maxx Bioscience Technology, which helps foreign firms secure recognition by mainland authorities, said the Government had been hesitant on research and funding. This hesitation had hindered the industry's development.
'Despite an Innovation and Technology Fund of HK$5 billion being set up, most of the money was spent on academic research. There is not much assistance from the Government to help the medicine developers to commercialise their products,' Ms Lo said.
The Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC) said 24 biotechnology projects had been approved since the fund was launched in November 1999 to the end of last year. The fund had invested a total of HK$45.6 million in the projects.
ITC said the assistance programme aimed to subsidise research and take the projects to pre-launch stage, but subsequent work on commercialisation would not be funded.
Compared with Singapore and the United States, Ms Lo said Hong Kong lacked infrastructure and expertise.
'I have been approached by many pharmacology specialists and I found many are innocent of product commercialisation.'
