The Life Sciences Innovation Value Chain: The Importance of Life Sciences Innovation to APEC

The Honourable Dr Manuel Dayrit, Secretary of Health of the Philippines,
The Honourable Dr Mark McClellan, Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honour for me to give this keynote address before the First Annual Meeting of the Life Sciences Innovation Forum. As advances in the life sciences regularly make headlines and improve life, it is only fitting that APEC is making this commitment to life sciences.

My remarks today shall be in three main parts. I shall begin by addressing the relevance of life sciences innovation to APEC. Then, I will share with you Thailand's perspective on life sciences and our efforts to move ahead in this sector. The last part of my remarks will hopefully offer some food for thought for our discussions later today and tomorrow.

Since APEC is concerned with promoting economic prosperity in the Asia-Pacific, life sciences innovation is thus very much relevant to the grouping. While APEC seeks mainly to achieve free and open trade through trade liberalization, it also has a broad agenda that includes many topics relating to regional economic growth and development. APEC's response to the impact of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), for example, demonstrates that it recognizes the importance of public health for economic growth and business confidence.

Indeed, studies have shown that investing in health will benefit economic growth, enhance worker performance and productivity, and help alleviate poverty. Healthy workers contribute to a healthy economy, while absenteeism due to health-related causes can cost billions of dollars in lost productivity and opportunities. At the same time, investment in R&D for new treatments and cures for chronic diseases could yield, on average, ten times the wellness return on investment as compared to investment in standard medical care. Hence, targeting life-sciences innovation will translate into a more effective and cost-effective investment for every stage of the health care process and prevent the loss of economic and human potential. Investing in life sciences will improve our capabilities in monitoring and halting the spread of diseases at an early stage. It will help us anticipate and respond to health threats, provide the highest quality care to patients, and effectively treat diseases, including chronic diseases and epidemics such as HIV/AIDS.

Our priority in APEC should be to expand the horizon of knowledge and technology, and, through more investment and capacity building in life sciences innovation, extend the frontiers of outreach to all economies in the region. We should explore and exploit regional potential in all stages of the life sciences innovation value chain - from research and development to manufacturing and marketing, and provision and delivery of health services.

Already, a number of individual APEC economies, including Thailand, have recognized and targeted emerging life sciences technologies as a new platform for economic growth and health promotion.

I have learned, for example, that Singapore has declared life sciences as the "fourth pillar" of its economy and is investing a significant portion of its GDP in developing the sector. Hong Kong is striving to become a leader in the development of pharmaceuticals based on traditional/Chinese medicines. Malaysia has identified biotechnology as one of the five core technologies that will accelerate its transformation into a developed economy by 2020. Japan has also implemented policies to strengthen its biomedical and genomic research, leading to a more innovative life-sciences sector, while Australia has announced a 10-year plan to promote the development of, and investment in, the innovative life sciences sector.

Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thailand is committed to promoting our life sciences sector as a policy priority and has been pursuing this objective both through our own efforts and in cooperation with partners. We therefore support discussions on life sciences innovation within the regional context, including APEC. In the Joint Statement between Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and President George W. Bush during the former's visit to the United States in June 2003, both leaders expressed support for the APEC Life Sciences Innovation Forum, noting that "Life Sciences will be one of the leading industry sectors in the new century, promising significant human benefits and economic growth."

From our perspective, life sciences offer plentiful opportunities for national economic and social development, which bring real benefits to the people. These opportunities include the advancement in technological research and development activities and infrastructure, improvement of choices and lower costs of health care and related services, development of human resources, and creation of high-paying jobs and work opportunities for Thai people. In particular, the development of life sciences will help us develop into a leading knowledge-based economy in Southeast Asia. Governments, businesses and the academia must join hands to utilize these opportunities.

For Thailand, the Government has taken a number of policy initiatives as well as legislative and administrative measures with a view to providing support and creating an environment conducive for the growth of the life sciences sector. These include promotion of human resources and technological development, such as through the establishment of the "Science park", and support for innovative researches and the development of research and development centres with a view to transforming them into "centres of excellence" such as in the areas of clinical trial studies and modern medicine.

In this context, our research facilities have made important discoveries and innovations based on indigenous efforts, such as those on the molecular structure of an enzyme target of important antimalarial drugs recently published in Nature Structural Biology, and the effective anti-TB compounds isolated from native plants in Thailand. In addition, a research programme to create Thailand SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) database has been initiated in search for correlation between diseases which are prevalent in Thailand and SNPs which show high frequency or are specific to Thai population.

Most recently, I had the honour of announcing, just yesterday, the establishment of Thailand Centre of Excellence for Life Sciences after my meeting with the US-ASEAN Business Council. The Centre will help foster and leverage Thailand's life science and biotechnology research capability and identify and enhance competitive advantages for the Thai life science industries through activities in such areas as research, education, commercialisation, technology infrastructure and international outreach. The Centre will be administered by the interim board of directors led by myself and comprise experts in related fields.

Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thailand's own stride to develop our life sciences sector has reinforced our conviction that cooperation and exchanges with other countries and partners, and intensified partnership between public and private sectors are crucial. The APEC Life Sciences Innovation Forum therefore offers a unique opportunity for individual economies in the Asia-Pacific region to explore and identify key areas where such cooperation and partnership can be promoted.

In this regard, I would like to suggest some key issues and proposals for APEC's actions to promote life sciences innovation in the region.

First and foremost, it is necessary for authorities to implement effective policy and regulatory frameworks for promoting innovation in human health life-sciences. APEC should thus encourage exchanges among its member economies and consider compiling best practices.

On research and development front, APEC should support the development of human and technological resources. We should promote more investment and technological transfer both at home and across economies. As each economy is developing its own R&D capabilities, it should therefore be advantageous for us to think about combining our efforts in these areas through such means as:

At the same time, as the case of SARS has shown, our people and economies are facing continuous threats of emerging diseases, and timely actions are crucial. The cooperation among several laboratories around the world to elucidate the Urbani SARS corona virus gene, which has led to better understanding of SARS and effective actions and cooperation in controlling the spread of the disease in affected areas, many of which are APEC economies, has demonstrated the potential for cooperation among APEC against such incidents.

In this regard, I propose that APEC think about promoting collaborative researches, particularly on emerging diseases, such as SARS, or on other communicable diseases such as drug resistant malaria or West Niles virus. Such cooperation can also be expanded further the next stage of the life-sciences value chain, namely, the development of new drugs.

On manufacturing and marketing, we should continue our efforts to facilitate the marketization of inventions and innovative products being developed in a more efficient manner as well as increase the flow of and access to innovative medicines and treatments throughout the region, including necessary life-saving drugs at affordable prices.

On health services, APEC should strive to promote quality health care services and deliveries in the APEC region through exchange of best practices and collaborative recognition of health care accreditation schemes.

In all areas of the life sciences value chain, we should look at further exchanges with regard to rules and regulations which would promote innovation in the life sciences sector. It will also be useful for APEC to explore the harmonization of regulations and standards related to life sciences innovation with a view to identifying common APEC standards.

I should hope that the ideas I have proposed will be elaborated upon by the Forum as we work to identify key elements for developing a strategic plan for life sciences innovation and formulating recommendations and deliverables for consideration by the APEC Leaders and relevant APEC bodies. Discussions on some of them may need further studies beyond this one meeting. Hence, I also urge you to think about the merit of establishing expert bodies or working groups under the Forum to carry on our dialogue in specific areas.

Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

World class life-sciences innovators, cutting edge technologies, innovative products, indigenous knowledge and financial and other resources necessary for the development of the life-sciences sector are available in the APEC region. This Forum should find ways and means to spread such expertise, knowledge and resources more evenly among developed and developing economies. We should identify and take concrete steps to utilize these assets more effectively to promote innovation throughout the region as means to enhance economic growth, human development and human security in the APEC economies.

As the theme of APEC 2003 goes, we should capitalize on "A World of Differences" and foster a "Partnership for the Future". Cooperation in life sciences innovation is a key area where we can benefit from differences and diversities across the APEC economies and promote partnership both at the inter-economy level and between public, private and academic sectors.

I would like to conclude my remarks by quoting Dr. Juan Enriquez, who wrote in his famous book "As the Future Catches You":
"Technology is not kind. ... It does not say "please" ... Countries and Individuals can either surf new and powerful waves of change or try to stop them and get crushed."

As a community within this evolving and interdependent global village, APEC must utilize our diverse strengths to bridge the gap and tap our potential to the full. We should ride the waves together on the uncharted waters of technological change.

Thank you for your attention.