QB3 Malaysia Program
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Friday, February 5, 2010
Neopeutics featured in the San Francisco Business Times
by Carl Uebelhart
Izza Jahari (member of the Malaysia program) is one of the founders of Neopeutics, which was featured in the San Francisco Business Times. Neopeutics, which is supported by QB3, recieved $2.5 million in funding from the Malaysian government for it's research into tracking gene and drug function.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Global Bio-Entrepreneurship Course a success
by Agnes Buenaventura
Thirty-three participants from Malaysia and several other countries attended QB3’s third annual week-long Global Bioentrepreneurship Course (GloBE), which concluded on Friday, October 23 at the UCSF Mission Bay campus. Read the article on the QB3 website.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Malaysia Program trainee arrives
by Agnes Buenaventura
Hung Hui Chung
Hung Hui Chung, a short term trainee under Malaysia Program 2, arrived on September 14, 2009. Chung will work at QB3 from September 14 to December 12. He is training under the mentorship of Kenny Ang (a Malaysia program long term trainee) at the Small Molecule Discovery Center, which is part of Jim Wells's laboratory.
Chung was born in Kuching, Sarawak but spent most of his primary and secondary schooling in Sibu.
Upon obtaining his STPM, he was accepted into the Biotechnology Program at University Malaysia Sabah, where he was trained in molecular biology techniques. During his final year, he completed a dissertation titled "Screening for antimicrobial activities in bacteria from Antarctica," which stoked his interest in drug screening.
Upon graduation, he was assigned to Sarawak Biodiversity Center (SBC) for a 10 week rotation. In SBC, he worked in the Molecular Biology lab where his responsibility was to screen for natural anticancer compounds isolated from native flora.
In September 2008, he graduated with a first class honors degree. Chung was awarded the Alumni’s Gold Medal for his distinct academic and co-curriculum performance. Before furthering his study in University Sains Malaysia, he spent a couple of months at its Biotechnology Research Institute in a project aiming to develop methods in meat authentication for Malaysia's halal meat industry.
Chung has been working on the role on the Fadsd6 gene in Zebrafish HUFA pathway at USM before joining the QB3 Malaysia Program as a short term scholar.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Malaysian ambassador visits QB3
by Agnes Buenaventura
From left to right: Norman Muhamad, Consul General; Sohaimi Sharif, Director, Malaysian Industrial Development Authority; Regis Kelly, QB3 Director; Ambassador JJ; his wife, Datin Serin Dr. Kalsom Ismail; Agnes Buenaventura, Malaysia Program Coordinator; and Hung Hui Chung, QB3 Malaysia Program Trainee
Malaysia's newly appointed ambassador to the United States visited QB3 on September 14, 2009. Ambassador Datuk Seri Jamaluddin Jarjis (also known as Ambassador JJ) was formerly Malaysian Minister of Science and Technology and, in that role, was involved in the QB3 Malaysia Program. Reg Kelly conducted a tour of the Mission Bay campus which concluded with a QB3 slide presentation.
Friday, November 30, 2007
UC leading effort to build biotech projects in Asia
San Francisco Business Times
by Ron Leuty
“There is useful technology to attack localized problems” in Asian countries, says UCSF’s Loke.
Atlantic salmon, Malaysia, biotechnology and the University of California are coming together to help overseas researchers, entrepreneurs and their countries.
The goal, organizers of the effort say, is clear: By focusing on their own backyards, countries with emerging economies and biotech aspirations can do good while doing well.
The effort was launched in October with a one-week workshop at QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, that attracted more than 20 people, including the CEO of a Malaysian biotech firm and a senior adviser of a Vietnamese biotech.
The course was organized by David Charron, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, but the star may have been Chiron Corp. co-founder Pablo Valenzuela.
Valenzuela returned to his native Chile and, among other things, studied how biotechnology could succeed there without going head-to-head with a Chiron, Genentech Inc. or other biotech big fish.
His answer came in the form of a big fish, the Atlantic salmon, plagued with a bacteria that has cost Chile's farmed salmon industry a reported $150 million annually.
As director of the Science for Life Foundation, which links scientists and industry, Valenzuela helped find a vaccine from a standard technology he knew from Chiron.
The vaccine, developed in Chile at a fraction of what it would cost to bring along a vaccine from scratch, eventually was licensed to an arm of Novartis AG.
It's a Silicon Valley model applicable in any country, said P'ng Loke, a Malaysian-born research scientist in the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He worked with the government-sponsored Malaysian Biotechnology Corp. to develop the October workshop.
"That's kind of what we're hoping to accomplish -- there is useful technology to attack localized problems," said Loke, who was a post-doctoral fellow at QB3. "But that technology also might lead to discoveries with a global impact."
In Malaysia, for example, biotechnology could be used to increase the efficiency of palm oil production, he said.
Valenzuela talked of using biotechnology to extract copper from a bacteria that typically is washed out of copper ore.
"The key point is he went in and saw what (Chile) really needed and wasn't met by biotechs today, and he's set up companies to do that," said QB3 Director Reg Kelly.
About half of the course was devoted to participants formulating business plans and working as teams, Kelly said.
Holding the workshop in the Bay Area eventually can help biotech leaders in other countries connect with Northern California companies and venture capital firms, Loke said.
As a result, VCs may make more investments outside the United States or a local biotech could see a technology's application from a different perspective.
This year's course was funded with $100,000 from the Malaysian Biotechnology Corp., and Malaysia sent about 20 people.
Next year, with a greater lead time and advertising, organizers hope to attract scientists, business leaders and government officials from Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe as well as Asia.
"There are lots of these courses around, lots of countries trying to develop biotech," Loke said. "But the situations in these countries are different. There isn't a Silicon Valley environment in those places."
October 29, 2007
Malaysia on right track in biotech development
The Edge Daily
by Thomas Soon
SAN FRANCISCO: Malaysia is heading in the right direction in the development of its biotechnology industry with the formation of a policy framework and accompanying programmes, California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3) executive director Regis B Kelly said.
He said that the formalisation of the National Biotechnology Policy in 2005 reflected the Malaysian government’s vision in jump-starting its biotechnology industry.
“It will be a stretch, but Malaysia has the capacity to get it done,” Kelly told The Edge Financial Daily on the sidelines of a week-long training programme, “Global Biotechnology Entrepreneurship Course”, here.
The course, organised by the Malaysian government-owned Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation Sdn Bhd (Biotech Corp), brought together more than 20 Malaysian public and private sector individuals and participants from China and Vietnam as well as three postdoctoral and graduate students from QB3.
The Malaysian delegation is led by Biotech Corp senior vice president, strategy and planning, Prof Norazmi Mohd Nor. QB3 is an association of University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley), University of California Santa Cruz and University of California San Francisco (UCSF).
The course is part of a five-year agreement between Biotech Corp and QB3 inked earlier this year to facilitate the development of the biotechnology industry in Malaysia.
Other Biotech Corp-QB3 programmes include research-based training and collaboration, allowing Malaysian students, postdoctoral and visiting faculty to come to QB3 and work alongside UCSF researchers.
Director of the Malaysia programme at QB3 and an assistant research immunologist at the UCSF division of experimental medicine, P’ng Loke, a Malaysian, said that the focus of the course was “emerging economies”, those which did not yet have an existing biotechnology infrastructure.
“We aim to help create successful biotechnology companies in these emerging economies,” he said, adding that this requires education for entrepreneurs as well as investors.
Kelly, who is a member of the Malaysian government’s International Advisory Panel on Biotechnology, said: “The association with QB3 is a smart thing. QB3 represents the cutting edge in biotechnology in the United States and the US is the global leader in biotechnology.”
He said that QB3 aimed to be recognised as the leading centre for the development of biotechnology throughout the world.
“We are not a profit centre. Our collaboration with Malaysia is revenue neutral,” he added.
Course director Prof David Charron from UC Berkeley said that while the jump-start for the industry was critical, it was equally vital for the country to nurture a sustainable eco-system and infrastructure.
“There must be continuing capacity building,” he said, adding that the academia was an essential component in the development of the industry.
October 25, 2007
QB3 Hosts Course to Help Seed and Speed Asian Biotech
UCSF News Services
By Wallace Ravven
Aiming to boost their expertise in the business of biotechnology and help their countries grow a strong biotech economy, more than 20 Asian scientists, biotech executives and investors are spending this week in a special course at UCSF Mission Bay.
Bay Area biotech industry leaders are helping the Asian group gauge business opportunities in their part of the world during the week-long course.
The course is funded by the biotechnology arm of the Malaysian government, known as the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation. QB3 hosts the event, and it is organized by David Charron, a professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
The Global Bio-Entrepreneurship Course brings together more than 20 Malaysians, as well as participants from China and Vietnam. They are joined by several postdoctoral scholars and graduate students form QB3.
The focus of the course is “emerging economies” – those that don’t yet have an existing biotechnology infrastructure like the Bay Area, says P’ng Loke, director of the program at QB3 and an assistant research immunologist in the UCSF Division of Experimental Medicine.
“We aim to help create successful biotechnology companies in these emerging economies,” Loke says, “and this requires education for the entrepreneurs as well as the investors.”
“The attendees cover a tremendous range, from CEOs of established mid-sized biotech companies in these countries, to academics, and investment fund mangers.”
The innovative program should help realize the vision for QB3 executive director Reg Kelly.
“We want QB3 to act as a partner to help emerging economies experience the same successes that the U.S. has enjoyed over the last 20 years,” Kelly says.
“Ultimately, it will be the people that will make the course a success. We hope that the participants will establish lasting relationships with each other and share their knowledge and experiences while establishing key international networks for the future.”
The presenters include leaders of Burrill & Company, a leading life sciences investment bank, who are providing a global overview of the industry. Leaders from Genentech, Fenwik & West LLP, and a dozen other biotech companies and investors are also speaking.
The bio-entrepreneurship course is the third part of an ambitious program sponsored by QB3 and funded by the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation. The first two elements support research-based training and collaboration, allowing Malaysian students, postdocs and visiting faculty to come to QB3 and work alongside UCSF research colleagues.
October 19, 2007
BiotechCorp, QB3 in RM5m entrepreneurship scheme
The Edge Daily
by Lim Shie-Lynn
BiotechCorp CEO Datuk Iskandar Mizal Mahmood
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation Sdn Bhd (BiotechCorp) is investing RM5 million in its global bioentrepreneurship programme with the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3) to train bioentrepreneurs and biotechnology companies towards developing the country’s human capital and cultivating successful ventures.
The global bioentrepreneurship programme, beginning Oct 20, will see 20 local participants from BioNexus enterprises, universities, government agencies and public-listed companies attending workshops and mentoring programmes at the institute in San Francisco, US.
Another 15 delegates from South America and US will also participate in the week-long workshops.
BiotechCorp launched a RM40 million mentoring/executive-in-residence (EIR) programme on Oct 9 to train entrepreneurs on managing new business ventures in the biotech industry for the next five years.
The programme is part of the RM2 billion government biotech development grant under the Ninth Malaysia Plan where a panel of mentors will be appointed to provide BioNexus companies and individuals with operational, financial and marketing advisory services to assist them in setting up or expanding operations in BiotechCorp focus areas.
BioNexus companies are those accorded the BioNexus status, making them eligible for certain privileges. These companies leverage on existing facilities, infrastructure and capabilities of universities and research institutions throughout Malaysia for biotechnology development.
Speaking to reporters at a media conference to announce the global bio-entrepreneurship programme yesterday, BiotechCorp chief executive officer Datuk Iskandar Mizal Mahmood said local participants were selected based on their capabilities, suitability and development needs of the BioNexus companies.
Iskandar said the partnership was an opportunity for Malaysian and foreign entrepreneurs to carry out research, human capital and bioentrepreneurship development.
“QB3 provides a content-rich training enabling participants to strengthen existing capabilities in life sciences, entrepreneurship and venture financing in biotechnology.
“A significant part of this programme is a panel of international experts who will provide much sought-after sharing of experience and networking,” Iskandar said
Speakers at the workshops would include QB3’s director Regis B Kelly, Steven Burril of Burrill & Co, and Chiron Corporation founder Pablo Valenzuela.
BiotechCorp is expecting to launch four more bio-entrepreneurship programmes with QB3 to train about 120 entrepreneurs over the next three years.
Iskandar said the programmes would be tweaked and based on the requirements of the biotechnology industry and inputs from BioNexus companies.
BiotechCorp entered into an agreement with QB3 last December to collaborate on research projects and equipping Malaysian scientists with the latest multi-disciplinary tools towards excelling in biotechnology entrepreneurship.
The partnership covered three aspects — research and postgraduate training, post-doctoral training and bio-entrepreneurship programme.
January 4, 2007
New Program aims to Treat World's Neglected Diseases
UCSF News Services
by Wallace Ravven
Reg Kelly, PhD, director of QB3
Top Malaysian bioscience graduate students and postdoctoral scientists will have a chance to study in the Bay Area as part of a new program aimed at boosting Asia’s ability to find treatments for some of the world’s most devastating diseases.
The $6.7 million program is funded by the non-profit Malaysia Biotechnology Corporation, which reports to the Malaysian government. Over the next five years, it will allow up to 30 Malaysian graduate students and postdocs to gain valuable technical skills in the laboratories of the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, or QB3, a cooperative effort that integrates the scientific expertise of UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz with private industry to benefit human health.
Taking these skills back home, the participants can strengthen the technical ability of Malaysian biomedical research. The hope is that the increasingly sophisticated Malaysian workforce and the economies of the region will allow the country to take on development of drugs for tropical diseases that have been neglected by the Western pharmaceutical industry.
“Malaysia is a developing country that wishes to develop a biotechnology industry,” said Reg Kelly, PhD, director of QB3. “Their vision is to build that industry around diseases that are not being addressed by Western biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms. QB3 wants to help them.” Kelly serves as principal investigator on the new project.
Neglected diseases include malaria, African sleeping sickness, schistosomiasis, Chagas’ disease and tuberculosis. These diseases disable or kill hundreds of millions of people in the developing world every year. In addition, the program aims to prepare young scientists to help Malaysia develop new diagnostics or treatments for important emerging viruses like Dengue, or the new and lethal Nipah and EV71 viruses.
The new program also supports visits by senior Malaysian scientists for three to 12 months to gain sophisticated laboratory training; brief, intensive training courses in biotechnology for Malaysian administrators; and an option for students and more senior Malaysian scientists to participate in UCSF’s Center for Bioentrepreneurship to learn the skills needed to help move laboratory discoveries into commercialization.
“The governments of developing countries such as Malaysia will invest more of their scarce resources into education if they see their research universities as engines of economic growth and job creation,” Kelly said. “Malaysia recognizes the contributions of the University of California to biotechnology growth in the Bay Area and wants its students to learn how we did it. This explains their interest in our entrepreneurship programs.”
The commitment to offer training to senior scientists and administrators draws on the insights of another UCSF program: Global Health Sciences. GHS leaders are convinced that the best hope for sustained attacks on devastating diseases in the developing world lies in the abilities of those countries to build up their technical and administrative infrastructure and trained workforce in science and medicine.
“We believe we have created a novel model for educating students from developing countries,” Kelly said. “Usually developing countries send their students to many different institutions in different countries. A widely recognized problem is that they come home to a less supportive environment in which change is difficult.
“The new agreement brings a cohort of scientists to one institution, QB3, where the group will be trained as a team to return to Malaysia and nucleate the growth of one institution, the National Institute of Pharmaceuticals and Nutraceuticals. If we succeed this could be a new model for capacity building in developing countries.”
The National Institute of Pharmaceuticals and Nutraceuticals is a newly established institute that aims to stimulate and sustain the global competitiveness of the Malaysian biopharmaceutical and nutritional supplement industries.
“I really believe that increased training of graduate students and postdocs from developing countries will eventually bring the greatest rewards towards global health,” said P’ng Loke, a postdoctoral scientist in pathology at UCSF and director of the new program. Loke is a native of Malaysia.
“Apart from my own research, my greatest passion is the development and training of science and scientists in the developing world,” he said.
The new five-year agreement calls for the Malaysia Biotechnology Corporation to support the educational, laboratory and training costs of the participants. The participating graduate students and postdocs will be selected by QB3 faculty scientists and the director of the MIPN, Mohamed Isa Abd Majid. The students do not receive academic degrees from UC, but from Malaysian universities.
The program benefits QB3 faculty scientists in several ways, Kelly said. In addition to strengthening their ties with Asian colleagues, faculty involved in the program will gain fully funded and highly motivated Malaysian graduate students and postdocs who will become valued colleagues as they become familiar with the advanced laboratory equipment and procedures.
Founded in 2000, QB3 is one of four California Institutes for Science and Innovation, each involving multi-campus collaborations and combining state and private resources to advance research critical to sustaining economic growth and competitiveness. Each Institute seeks major advances by combining the expertise of different disciplines, and bringing together the strengths of different campuses. With headquarters at UCSF, QB3 brings together scientists and engineers at UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. It is the only Institute devoted to research to advance human health. Others focus on telecommunications, information technology and nanotechnology
QB3 supports an active research program on some of the world’s most pernicious parasitic diseases. Scientists at the Sandler Center for Basic Research in Parasitic Diseases at UCSF have identified enzymes that are essential to digestion in the parasites that cause Chagas’ disease, schistosomiasis and African sleeping sickness, and they have screened for existing compounds that can disable the enzymes. Pre-clinical research has shown that one drug candidate is effective against Chagas’ disease, and studies are under way to determine its ability to treat schistosomiasis and sleeping sickness as well.
QB3 scientists at UC Berkeley have combined genes from three separate organisms to create a single bacterial factory, capable of making an anti-malaria “miracle” drug simply and cheaply. The drug, artemisinin, is one of the most promising next-generation anti-malarials because of its effectiveness against strains of the malaria parasite now resistant to front-line drugs.
QB3 scientists at UC Santa Cruz have established a high throughput screening facility to identify biologically active compounds, including potential anti-malarial drugs, and also to screen compounds from the marine environment for leads to possible new drugs.