Biotechnology in Hong Kong: Prospects and Challenges

The global biotechnology revolution purportedly began during the late 1970s, when the biological “heuristic” in health care technology was expected to both rival and ultimately prove superior to existing chemistry-based approaches to health and health care. Rooted in new discoveries in genetics and the promise of genetic engineering, and fuelled by a flurry of government research support, venture capital and increasingly entrepreneurial universities, biotechnology was expected to revolutionize how human therapeutics were developed, screened, and delivered. Biotechnological tools were expected to rationalize drug development. They would lead to new diagnostic tools. Recombinant DNA techniques would allow scientists to re-engineer cells to produce new and “smarter” proteins, the basis for a new generation of therapeutics. The introduction of biotech would in effect restructure the global human health care industry, as pharmaceutical firms increasingly turned to smaller, specialized and more cutting-edge biotech firms for new screening techniques and drug candidates. Biotechnology was imagined as an enabling technology, a platform technology, and a source of knowledge for advancing human health care. Simply put, the possibilities for applying biotechnology to health and health care seemed endless.