Taipei Times
Date: Oct 28, 2015
By: Alison Hsiao / Staff reporter
Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said
Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen yesterday speaks at the party’s headquarters in Taipei about her proposal to turn Taiwan into an Asia-Pacific center for medical biotechnological research. Photo: CNA
Taiwan should seek to become an Asia-Pacific center for medical biotechnological research, tapping the nation’s advantages of possessing a genetic database of certain Asian ethnic groups and an understanding their lifestyle habits and environments.
Biotechnology is a fast-moving field and medical biotechnology offers significance prospects for Taiwanese industry, she said.
“We have excellent human resources in clinical medicine and research to study diseases specific to ethnic Chinese, with a renowned international reputation. We also possess a world-class medical system with sufficient medical professionals and facilities that are well-equipped to conduct clinical tests for new medicines and medical devices,” Tsai said.
“There are a lot of challenges too, as it is a capital-intensive, skill-intensive and expertise-intensive industry. This is why we should integrate efforts by the government, academic institutes and industries to continue to lay the groundwork by strengthening our human resources, capital, intellectual property and regulations for establishing Taiwan as the research and industrial center of the medical biotechnology of the Asia-Pacific region,” she said. [FULL STORY]
