The next coronavirus: how a biotech boom is boosting Asian defences

It’s not just investment, talent, openness to data and AI that have made places like Singapore and Hong Kong hotspots for the biotech industry

Exposure to diseases like Sars and the coronavirus have made them quicker to react and more resilient, too

Reading Time:7 minutes

Pedestrians in Hong Kong are reflected in an advertisement. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 7:45am, 8 Feb 2020Updated: 2:23pm, 4 Mar 2020

When Singapore biotech company Celligenics was established three years ago, its founders decided that it should be rooted in Asia so it could solve Asian problems.

The company, which specialises in stem cell technologies and related-product development, aims to ease the problems faced by the region’s ageing population, including chronic degenerative conditions such as those arising from diabetes.

“Diabetes is a growing problem in Asia and we are looking at conditions that diabetic patients suffer from, like chronic non-healing wounds,” said Kurt Wee, the chief executive officer.

Celligenics is among the many players – big and small – in the region’s booming biotech industry that are increasingly using Asian ideas to bolster Asia’s defences against disease.

Asia is likely to overtake Europe as the world’s second-largest medtech market, behind the United States, in the next few years, according to a 2018 study by consultancy firm McKinsey & Company.

The firm put the value of Asia’s medtech companies at US$95 billion in 2017, predicting them to edge ahead of their European counterparts by 2023 and be worth more than US$137 billion, at which point they would account for 26 per cent of the global market.

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