Asia-Pacific Biotech News

Incitive to Prepare for IPO.

Scigen Acquires Manufacturing Facility from Shreya Biotech.

Taiwan's New Discovery on Cancer.

Japan's Kissei Licenses Glufast to Elixir.

Generic Pharma Giant Teva Increases Stake in Chinese Biotech Firm.

Living Cell Technologies Awarded NZ$2.7 Million Investment through the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.

Bionomics Wins A$3.7 Million AusIndustry Grant.

Singapore to Invest $7.5 Billion over Five Years on Research and Development.

Queensland Projects Win A$1.6 million Funding.

An Australian Vaccine Development Company — Vaxine.

Developing Vaccines for Infectious Diseases Prevalent to the Asia Pacific.

Improving Manufacturing Technologies for New Generation Vaccines.

NewBiomed PIKA, A Vaccine Company with a Bright Future.

Synthetic Lipopeptides Vaccines.

CyGenics Expands Into Europe.

Increasing US Investment Support for Starpharma.

Proteomics — An Australian-based Biotech Company.

Resonance Health to Expand US Business Operations.

Rockeby biomed Announces Four New Developments for Avian Influenza Test Kits.

Ranbaxy Buys Companies in Belgium, Italy and Romania.

Japan's Bioventures Today — HuBit Genomix Inc.

Abbott to Invest US$280 Million in the Largest Nutritional Plant in Singapore.

Covance Celebrates 10th Anniversary Milestone in Singapore.

NanoMaterials Technology Opens New S$2.5 Million Facility.

Waters Corporation Collaborates with Solectron.

Zentek Engineering Becomes First Irish Company to Set Up Asia Pacific HQ in Singapore.

Gatekeeper Protein's Role in Rare Kidney Disease Unraveled.

IBN's Hydrogel Could Lead to Better and Safer Disease Treatments.

With the increasing loss of forests, the need for their renewal by natural means is imminent. Thanks to the Kyoto treaty demanding reduction in greenhouse gases, plantations of fast growing and high yielding tree species have thrived around the world. In the past few years, there has been a lot of progress in the area of forest biotechnology. Genetic modification (GM) has introduced desirable traits such as insect tolerance, herbicide resistance, sterility, better pulping quality and fast growth. The plantation of GM trees, however, raises the concerns of possible damage to the environment, impact to biodiversity and possible gene flow into natural forests. These issues need to be addressed before there is any wide acceptance of GM trees. Other non-GM biotechnology techniques such as mass propagation of elite tree individuals through meristematic propagation or somatic embryogenesis are more acceptable and have been widely used.