Taiwan Seeks San Diego Biotechnology Ties. - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

By Dean Calbreath, The San Diego Union-Tribune Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Feb. 25--In an effort to counter job seepage to mainland China, government and business leaders in Taiwan are trying to create new niches in biotechnology partly by building links with scientists in San Diego and other U.S. tech centers.

At a three-day Taiwan-U.S. Biotechnology Forum at the Del Mar Hilton, 20 executives from Taiwan biotech companies, venture-capital firms and educational institutions have been meeting with leaders of such local firms as Maxim Pharmaceuticals, Illumina and Aviva Bioscience to discuss ways of forming trans-Pacific partnerships.

For the San Diego firms, Taiwan means a new market with well-funded research and development programs and an investment-hungry group of venture capitalists, many of whom are unafraid to pump money into the often-risky biotech industry.

"There"s a lot of venture capital money in San Diego, but it"s been hesitant to invest in startups in the past several years. But venture capitalists in Taiwan are definitely interested in investing here," said Chi-Cheng Wu, principal scientist at La Jolla"s Neurome Inc. and local leader of the Taiwan-America Biotechnology Association, one of the sponsors of the program.

For the Taiwan representatives, biotech is seen as a way of replacing tech jobs that have been migrating to China.

"All of our labor-intensive industry has moved to China," said Shannon Shiau, media representative with the Taiwan Information Office in Los Angeles. "We"d like to upgrade our economy by focusing on knowledge-based, high-tech industries."

As computer engineering jobs disappear, the Taipei government has been investing heavily in biotech projects that involve engineering, such as nanotechnology and diagnostic computer imaging.

"Imaging is one of the very important fields we"re moving into," said Wen-guey Wu, dean of life sciences at Taiwan"s National Tsinghua University. "When you get to a hospital, 50 percent of your costs these days have to do with imaging, so this can be a very lucrative field."

Another growth field in Taiwan is finding uses for Chinese herbal medicines.

"Herbal medicine is a gold mine," said Charles Shih, Taiwan-born president of San Diego"s AndroScience Corp.

Shih said his company is experimenting with treatments for baldness, acne and prostate cancer based on a Chinese herb. He said he is leaving for Taiwan soon to find funding, because the climate for finding venture capital is better in Taiwan than in the United States these days.

"Venture capitalists here got burned in the last couple years, especially if they invested in the early stages of a product," he said. "Now, a lot of people wait until a product makes it through clinical testing before they begin to invest."

To see more of The San Diego Union-Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.uniontrib.com

(c) 2004, The San Diego Union-Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

MAXM, ILMN,