The Hindu Business Line : Bio Asia meet from Feb 9 — US co Albany plans R&D facility in Hyderabad

According to Mr Utkarsh Palnitkar of Ernst & Young, apart from setting up a research centre at the Knowledge Park, the American company also proposes to construct its own facility in the Shapoorji Pallonji Biotech Park on the city's outskirts.

Albany is into research and development projects and collaborates with various pharmaceutical, biotechnology and genomics companies, he said.

Mr Palnitkar was addressing newspersons here on Wednesday in connection with the ensuing Bio Asia, an annual global bio business forum, sponsored by the State Government.

The third edition of Bio Asia-2006 would be held here from February 9. The three-day event is promising more this time both in terms of partnering in business and research and also bigger trade show, according to the State Biotechnology Director, Dr Ashok. About 50 exhibitors, 500 conference delegates and 60 internationally acclaimed speakers were expected to participate in the event. Further, more than 15,000 visitors from 33 leading biotech countries were also expected to take part, he added.

The new features include special session titled `Nurturing entrepreneurship in biotechnology,' sponsored by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), and more structured meetings on business-to-business marketing to be handled by an American company.

The State Minister for Industries, Ms J. Geeta Reddy, said the event would showcase the Genome Valley, the hub of biotech research and manufacturing at Hyderabad, as a model and attract more companies to begin their operations and collaborations.

According to the Chairman of All India Biotech Association, Mr B.S. Bajaj, three more countries - Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh - have joined the Federation of Asian Biotech Associations (FABA) indicating growing significance to the Hyderabad bio initiative. This takes the total number of member countries in FABA to 13, he said.

The State Government has chosen Mr Rama Reddy V. Guntaka, Department of Molecular Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Science Centre, to confer the Genome Valley Excellence Award-2006 on him during the conference.