Two years ago, the South African government implemented a wide-ranging national biotechnology strategy in which it established four biotechnology regional innovation centres (BRICs). One such BRIC is Cape Biotech, which serves as a development hub in the Western Cape for a host of biotechnology businesses and product offerings. As such, it helps merge business with science and technology.

As a regional nexus, Cape Biotech is poised to turn the Western Cape into the biotechnology centre of South Africa. The area possesses the necessary infrastructure in the form of three universities and other tertiary institutions, all with a strong research focus.

Cape Biotech’s role

Cape Biotech has three major roles: industry stimulation through capacity creation; management of government funds by investing in promising projects; and co-ordination of business support networks. Its functions include investment, networking, bio-economy intelligence, marketing and capacity development.

Project details

The organisation has already earmarked six human health and industrial bioprocessing projects for funding. The most prominent is Shimoda, a leading biopharmaceutical discovery company focusing on the development of innovative, proprietary drug delivery systems and novel therapeutic compounds. These enable the efficient delivery of drug molecules, proteins and genes to selected sites within the human body.

Another project is The Biovac Institute, a vaccine development and production centre. The public-private partnership is based in Cape Town and is developing the capability to produce vaccines locally. The need for such technology cannot be overemphasised, and South Africa stands to benefit significantly should it develop the capacity to produce vaccines itself, rather than import them.

Synexa Life Sciences has also demonstrated initial success in manufacturing secondary metabolites using a combination of standard and proprietary production technologies coupled with state-of-the-art purification systems. The products are used in various biomedical research applications, ranging from signal transduction physiology to apoptosis and cell activation studies.

Stage two

Since its launch in April 2003, Cape Biotech has worked on building capacity and becoming fully operational. Initially, it invested in late-stage, highly valuable developments. Now in its second phase, the emphasis has shifted to projects that can be nurtured over a ten-year term, and to more focused sectors that would give the region and the nation a competitive advantage.

By providing the appropriate incentives to researchers, Cape Biotech is creating commercially viable life sciences entities with good cash flow potential. This, in turn, will spur business on to consider biotechnology as a viable investment option. The aim is to develop the application of biotechnology to the extent that it makes a significant contribution to human health, food security and environmental sustainability, in South Africa and abroad.

Cape Biotech’s resources are limited, though significant, and the exceptional quality of its projects justifies any sizeable investment. Although government funding has been secured for the next three years, Cape Biotech aims to become operationally self-sustainable. To ensure this, as well as the viability of its projects, other sources of revenue are thus required.

Anyone interested in Cape Biotech’s investment options, or in finding out more about the organisation, can contact:

Dr Mark Fyvie, CEO;

Telephone: +27 21 426 0022;

Fax: +27 21 426 0029;Email: mark.fyvie@capebiotech.co.za;

Web: www.capebiotech.co.za