Bioven, Cuban firm in biotech joint venture

BIOVEN Holdings Sdn Bhd will team up with foreign partners in Cuba to spearhead the development of biotechnology products in Malaysia. The move would enable the company to benefit from its partners’ ready access to up-and-running biotechnology projects, said Bioven chairman Mukhriz Mahathir. “This joint venture is the first of many more. Bioven is in discussions with several other biotech institutes in Cuba for similar types of collaboration,” he said after the signing of an agreement between Bioven and Heber Biotec SA in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. 

The event, witnessed by Health Minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng, was held in conjunction with the launch of BioMalaysia 2002, the first international biotechnology symposium, exhibition and business partnering hosted by the Malaysian government.  The new joint-venture company, Heber Bioven Sdn Bhd, will be 70% owned by Bioven and 30% by Heber Biotech, the marketing arm of the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology of Cuba (CIGB). Muhkriz said the joint-venture partners would concentrate on the distribution of Heber’s biotech products, currently marketed in Cuba and Malaysia as well as Asean and selected Asian countries, as its initial programme. Some of the products that the joint-venture company plans to market are therapeutic vaccines. 

In the second phase, Heber Bioven would facilitate joint research and development (R&D) projects between Cuba and Malaysia and local universities. “We are talking to the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre and we are hoping to bring the two parties together by the middle of next year,’’ Mukhriz said.  “Some of the R&D projects will focus on diseases such as dengue and meningitis,’’ he added. Heber Biotech will manufacture biotechnology products locally in the third phase of the joint venture. 

“It could take one to two years before we can get anything off the ground,” Mukhriz said.  He added that Bioven was in the process of submitting five product applications to the authorities for approval.  “Of the five, three are by CIGB and the other two from other Cuban biotech producers,” he said.