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In Cuba, a biotech revolution
Michael Kranish The Boston Globe
Friday, May 17, 2002
Castro's investment holds huge potential
WASHINGTON All of the elements of a classic biotech
tale are present. There are scientists touting a
revolutionary cancer treatment, a tiny company willing
to finance the idea, a university hoping to reap big
licensing fees, and a government official who believes
that there are billions of dollars to be made.
But this is not the tale of just another start-up.
This tale unfolds in Cuba, and the government official
is President Fidel Castro. The tiny biotech company,
YM Biosciences Inc. of Toronto, has made a deal with
the University of Havana to produce a cancer vaccine
that could compete against one being produced by a
U.S. company. If the deal goes through, Castro's
government could receive hundreds of millions of
dollars in royalties and help biotech become the
biggest money maker for the island nation after
tourism, tobacco, rum and sugar.
Until this month, such deals have received relatively
little attention outside the biotech world. But last
week, the Bush administration accused Castro of using
the biotech business to conceal development of
biological weaponry materials that might have been
exported to Iran and other countries.
That allegation, in turn, prompted Castro on Monday to
escort former President Jimmy Carter, who was in
Havana on a long-scheduled trip, to a Cuban biotech
center and declare that the product is medicine, not
the materials of war.
Whether or not the White House accusation is true, it
has shined a spotlight on the fact that Cuba has spent
hundreds of millions of dollars developing a biotech
industry in an effort to compete directly against U.S. companies. The
undersecretary of state for arms control, John Bolton, who made the
accusations against the Cuban biotech industry, has also acknowledged
that it is "one of the most advanced in Latin America and leads in the
production of pharmaceuticals and vaccines that are sold worldwide."
In the biotech world, this is not just another chapter
in a debate about Cuba; it is also about whether it is
worth trying to leapfrog the U.S. embargo and invest
in Cuban technology in hopes of a big payday.
Already, GlaxoSmithKline PLC has licensed a Cuban
vaccine for meningitis B, which the company hopes to
eventually sell in the United States and around the
world if clinical trials prove successful. Cuba itself
exports a version of the drug to some countries. And
YM Biosciences, a 25-employee company, hopes that its partnership with
the University of Havana on a cancer drug will one day result in sales
of $500 million per year.
At the same time, the Biotechnology Industry
Organization, which represents many biotech and
pharmaceutical companies, warns that Cuba may have
reproduced drugs made by U.S. companies in violation
of patent laws, a claim supported by a former top
Cuban science official.
"Yes, Cuba did copy of course some of the developments
obtained by some of the U.S. companies because there
was no patent laws recognized in Cuba," said Jose de
la Fuente, who for 10 years was director of research
and development at Cuba's Center for Genetic
Engineering and Biotechnology, which Carter visited
Monday.
De la Fuente added, "Of course, when Cuba wanted to
sell some of those products in the international
market, Cuba then searched for markets where those
patents are not recognized in Asia and Latin America."
De la Fuente, who left Cuba in 1999 and now lives in
Oklahoma, stressed that Cuba's biotech industry had
also developed unique drugs, including the meningitis
vaccine now licensed by Glaxo. As for bioterrorism
products, de la Fuente said none were manufactured
during his tenure.
But he said Cuba became so starved for hard currency
that it sold technology to Iran in the late 1990s that
could be used to produce biological weapons. For
example, de la Fuente said, Cuba sold Iran recombinant materials
intended to be used to make a hepatitis vaccine, but the technology
could also be used for bioterrorism.
"Once the technologies are transferred," de la Fuente
said, "the country that bought the technology could do
with them that what they want."
Bolton said the Cuban biotech industry has produced
"dual-use" products that can be used both for
pharmaceuticals and bioterrorism. But Carter said that
U.S. officials who briefed him before he left for Cuba
made "absolutely no allegations" about the nation's bioterrorism
capability.
Cuba's biotechnology business is clearly a Castro
creation. As soon as he became Cuba's leader, Castro
issued a proclamation posted throughout Cuba that
said, "The future of this nation is necessarily the
future of men of science." When Castro saw the
emergence of biotechnology in the 1980s, de la Fuente
said, he poured $1 billion into the industry - an
enormous amount for such a small, poor country.
Copyright C 2002 The International Herald Tribune
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