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WHEN BIOTECH MEANS ITALIAN
Rome - (Ign) - A quiet start, but also a deep-rooted tradition in the world of scientific biological research which was bound to lead to success in the end. After a period of slow growth, the Italian biotech industry now occupies by rights a leading position in Europe. In Italy, 70% of biotech companies (www.assobiotec.it) work in the health sector. With 21 drugs undergoing clinical development, our country is in sixth place in Europe, and some regions hold a position of clear leadership, such as Veneto, where pharmaceutical and biotech companies account for 31% of local industrial research expenditure. Basically, Italy can now aspire to a leading role in the development of biomedicine by creating the conditions to attract investments in the high-risk field of biotechnological research. Moreover, the drugs and vaccines resulting from biotechnological research number around 200, and are used by over 200 million patients the world over. Around 40% of the new drugs registered are "biomolecules": consequently, of the drugs approved in 2003, 2 out of 5 are biotechnological in origin. If we also include the synthetic molecules found thanks to biotechnology, the total of new drugs originating from the application of modern biological technologies rises to over 50 percent.
And for Italy, despite a certain delay, the biotech sector is destined to become of primary importance. In fact, our country is today, almost paradoxically, in a privileged position in terms of the enormous potential it offers for the setting-up of biotechnological businesses. Italy offers significant scientific, human and cultural resources, still largely unexploited. Its trump card is the presence of a top-level research community in the life sciences, whose research capabilities need to be transferred to the business and industrial world if they are to be exploited to the full. The available pool of knowledge and talent awaiting exploitation offers various advantages for those who intend to invest in the business development of biotechnology, and decide to choose Italy rather than other European countries where the bioindustrial development process is more advanced.
Basically, then, Italy has a traditionally fertile scientific humus and specific expertise in biological research, leading to the creation of businesses which represent benchmarks of absolute excellence in the international field, particularly in the sectors of vaccines (I.R.I.S. in Siena - Tuscany) and diagnostics (Diasorin in Saluggia - Piedmont). Italian research can boast instances of excellence - certainly not the result of isolated flashes of genius, but of a consolidated scientific and cultural system - which are more than sufficient to justify the attraction of production investments to exploit them to the full. Cases in point are the vaccines for whooping cough and meningitis (viral and meningococcal) created by the I.R.I.S. Research Centre in Siena (formerly the Sclavo Research Centre), and the discoveries made by Professor Boncinelli's team on the molecular mechanisms involved in development of the cerebral cortex. In particular, the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan is one of the leading centres for gene therapy.
Also in the field of agronomics, Italian researchers are among the first to have focused attention on the protection of agro-biodiversity and product quality: cutting-edge research is carried out by universities and experimental institutes on gene therapy for the most difficult pathologies (such as viroses) threatening species with a high added value, typical of the Italian farming tradition.
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