Green issues next biotech revolution

By SIMON COLLINS

Biotechnology leader Dr Jim Watson says New Zealand should focus its biotech efforts on environmental issues - not drugs.

Watson, whose company Genesis Research & Development made its name with a drug for the skin disease psoriasis, says environmental concerns will be the major driver of the "second wave" of the world's biotech revolution.

He told the Pacific Rim Biotechnology Conference in Auckland yesterday that New Zealand's base in agricultural sciences gave it a huge advantage in the new era.

Our strict regulations on genetic modification would also become the world's "gold standard", giving local companies a clean and green marketing advantage for products that would benefit the environment.

"Yes, it's tough living through it, but we'll have a gold standard, and I think that is very important."

He said the "first wave" of biotechnology concentrated almost totally on medicines.

"More than 90 per cent of the value in companies listed on Nasdaq lies in health or health-related products."

That wave was made possible by US health insurance and medicare, which paid for the new drugs.

"Just think what would happen in the US if we put Pharmac in there for a year. The industry would collapse." But healthcare was only the tip of the iceberg.

"The second wave will grow out of agriculture, but more out of the environment," Watson said.

In the past century, agricultural production had been driven by growing use of fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and irrigation, but the cost was polluted soils and waterways.

The world had also become increasingly reliant on fossil fuels, with resulting global warming and unpredictable climatic changes.

Biotechnology could help overcome these problems with new plants that were better adapted to their environments, and more disease-resistant, without needing artificial chemicals or energy-intensive farming.

Genesis is part of a joint venture, ArborGen, with Rubicon and US companies International Paper and MeadWestvaco to develop trees needing fewer chemicals to turn them into paper or building timber.

It has another venture with Wrightsons to improve the food content of grass, and a venture with Landcare Research to develop molecules to control botrytis and other fungal plant diseases.

New Zealand could never afford to take new drugs through to world markets because the cost ran into hundreds of millions of dollars.

But it could afford to develop products based on agriculture and forestry, where its scientific strength lay.

However, he warned that this new era would require strength in software, to sort through thousands of genes to find the ones which had desired effects.

"It's very important for us to get IBM or another computing organisation that is committing big resources to life sciences to come down here and partner us."