The National Biotechnology Policy unveiled in 2005 is already in place. The implementation of the policy is anchored by the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation (MBC). Based on their latest information, many companies have now been accorded the Bionexus Status.Bionexus companies have to fulfil MBC's many technical and commercial criteria. With the Bionexus status, the companies are eligible for the many incentives offered under the policy, including tax breaks and some attractive research and development grants.
The focus now is on three sectors, agricultural, pharmaceutical and industrial.
In the pharmaceutical sector, there has been a growing interest in producing vaccines from plants. This is what is termed as molecular farming. Essentially it involves producing new compounds from plants through genetic engineering. The new compounds can include pharmaceutical products such as medical drugs, vaccines or antibodies.
In the European Union, genetically engineering the tobacco plant to produce vaccines has already advanced to the commercial phase. Tobacco is among the easiest plant to genetically transform.
What is needed is only to do some research to develop an economically high-yielding transformed tobacco plant designed to produce vaccines for the regional market. And this is not difficult.
In the EU, molecular pharming through tobacco is already on the verge of commercial reality. The target vaccine, of course, differs.
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