{"id":37362,"date":"2011-07-07T10:18:19","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T07:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=37362"},"modified":"2014-01-06T13:51:01","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T11:51:01","slug":"building-biotechnology-in-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/07\/07\/building-biotechnology-in-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Biotechnology in Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-37364\" title=\"yali-friedman_3_tn\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/yali-friedman_3_tn.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"150\" \/>The Turkish response to the innovation score I generated for them in the Scientific American Worldview Scorecard was pretty clear. They interpret their low score \u2014 39th out of 48 countries measured \u2014 as an indication that they continue to \u2018miss the biotech train.\u2019 The primary reasons for Turkey\u2019s low score are:<\/p>\n<p>* Relatively weak intellectual property protection<\/p>\n<p>* Relatively low intensity of biotechnology activities<\/p>\n<p>* Relatively poor capital availability for biotechnology ventures<\/p>\n<p>* Relatively weak educational output of scientists<\/p>\n<p>* Relatively low R&amp;D expenditures by domestic companies<\/p>\n<p>The solution to improving Turkey\u2019s standing seems pretty clear \u2014 strengthen IP, implement programs to encourage students to study science, and support investments in company formation and R&amp;D. But, these are not simple changes. As India has seen in their dispute over Novartis\u2019 Glivec patents, strengthening IP protection may mean balancing short-term domestic interests with the future potential of foreign investments. Promoting company formation and the development of scientists can also be challenging. My recent study of the locations of pharmaceutical drug inventors came to a surprising conclusion: the dominant countries are the legacy pharma countries. Despite their significant investments, emerging markets have yet to produce measurable outputs in innovation.<\/p>\n<p>So, what is Turkey to do? I think that it is a bit harsh to say that they continue to miss the train. Many countries strive to develop biotechnology industries, and fail to show progress despite significant investments. Turkey is blessed with a strong entrepreneurial culture, and can get \u2018on the train\u2019 if they decide to provide patient sustained support. The key to developing a stronger biotechnology industry is to continue to find and clear hurdles to innovation. Case studies from around the world are in plentiful supply \u2014 the challenge is to identify and implement the solutions best suited to Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>Yali Friedman lives in Washington, DC and is author of Building Biotechnology and other books; founder of DrugPatentWatch; and chief editor of the <em>Journal of Commercial Biotechnology<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>via Building Biotechnology in Turkey | Biotech Blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Turkish response to the innovation score I generated for them in the Scientific American Worldview Scorecard was pretty clear. They interpret their low score \u2014 39th out of 48 countries measured \u2014 as an indication that they continue to \u2018miss the biotech train.\u2019 The primary reasons for Turkey\u2019s low score are: * Relatively weak [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":37364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[845],"tags":[6345],"class_list":["post-37362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scitech","tag-biotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}