"South-South Entrepreneurial Collaboration in Health Biotech" in the May 2010 issue of Nature Biotechnology

The McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health is pleased to announce the publication of the article, ‘South-South Entrepreneurial Collaboration in Health Biotech’ in the current (May 2010) issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology. The article is based on a survey of entrepreneurial collaborations among health biotech firms in developing countries. The research was lead by the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health and was carried out in collaboration with researchers in five developing countries.

A description of the article follows. Please click the following link for full access to the article:

Thorsteinsdóttir  H., Melon CC, Ray M, Chakkalackal S, Li M, Cooper JE, Chadder J, Sáenz TW, de Souza Paula MC, Ke W, Li L,  Madkour MA, Aly S, El-Nikhely N, Chaturvedi S, Konde V, Daar AS, Singer PA, South-South Entrepreneurial Collaboration in Health Biotech. Nature Biotechnology, (2010) Vol 28, number 5, pp. 407-416.

Developing countries are striving to lessen their reliance on the politically dominant developed countries, and are increasingly favoring partnerships between themselves, known as south-south partnerships.  Firms in developing countries have begun to target one another's markets as can be observed in increased south-south trade. Yet there is limited knowledge about these firm linkages-whether their cooperation is restricted to traditional sectors, or if it extends to more science intensive sectors such as health biotech; and whether the collaboration is solely restricted to trade, or if it involves joint research and development (R&D) and other innovation activities.

To better understand the extent and characteristics of South-South collaboration, we sent a brief survey to 467 health biotech firms in six developing countries that have relatively strong biotech sectors - Brazil, China, Cuba, Egypt, India and South Africa.  We asked the firms to tell us about their collaborations with all other developing countries.  A total of 288 firms responded, a response rate of 62%.

The survey reveals a surprisingly high level of South-South collaboration, with 27% of the firms that responded indicating that they are actively collaborating with other developing countries. However, most of the collaboration is confined to marketing and dissemination activities and there is a lack of emphasis on collaboration for new or improved health biotech products and processes. Follow-up case study research has shown that the South-South collaboration can have significant benefits by strengthening the capabilities of firms and research organisations to address shared problems. By pooling their expertise and resources developing countries can produce cost effective health solutions which are appropriate for the health needs in developing countries. South-south collaboration is, therefore, an asset that international organisations and donor organisations should harness to a larger extent when promoting global health.

The research was supported by grants from Genome Canada through the Ontario Genomics Institute and the International Development Research Centre.

For further information please contact Halla Thorsteinsdóttir: halla.thorsteinsdottir@mrcglobal.org

List of collaborators on the survey:

  • Brazil - Maria Carlota de Souza Paula and Tirso Sáenz (Center for Sustainable Development, University of Brasilia)
  • China - Wen Ke (Institute of Policy and Management, Chinese Academy ofSciences)
  • Egypt- Magdy Madkour (Library of Alexandria)
  • India - Sachin Chaturvedi (Research and Information System for the Developing Countries)
  • South Africa - Victor Konde (University of Zambia)