VC urges more pharma biotech commitment

The time is ripe to insist multinational pharmaceuticals lift their commitment to the local life sciences industry, claims venture capitalist Dr Geoff Brooke.

"If the offshore pharmas want to sell their drugs here, they should be told they have to set up local operations and train Australians," says Brooke, managing director of venture capital group Rothschild Bioscience.

The industry's commercial growth is hamstrung by a scarcity of seasoned hands on the middle rungs of the drug development ladder, he argues.

"The real issue is we don't have that entrepreneurial, commercially-focused base in Australia to complement our talented but commercially-naive scientific base.

"Basically it boils down to adding value between the test tube stage and the Phase III human clinical trials.

"That is where we don't capture much value and we aren't training young Australians how to do that."

Only the large drug companies are able to offer that type of on-the-job training and very few of them are made-in-Australia.

So foreign pharmaceutical companies operating here should be persuaded to do more to address the problem, Brooke says.

The government should put it to them that "we want to learn technology development in Australia and they are going to help train people or they aren't going to get preferred pharmaceutical pricing."

One approach could be to encourage every multinational organisation selling medications in Australia to employ 15 to 20 Australians in their home country drug development centres, Brooke suggests.

The program could feature three-year tours of duty by Australian post-doctoral trainees with the Federal Government picking up half their salary package.

Because it involves existing facilities, it "could be started tomorrow" and circumvent the long lead time needed for multinationals to establish local facilities.

Brooke points to tax incentives and other financial inducements offered by Singapore to attract pharmaceutical investment as initiatives Australia could learn from.

"Forget all this stuff about level playing fields...we need to lie, cheat or steal," to persuade large pharamaceuticals to establish Australian operations.

In terms of making funds available for developing the industry, government "has done a lot and we ought to get off their case and give them some credit," says Brooke.

Brooke may get a response to his suggestions sooner than he thinks.

The Pharmaceuticals Industry Action Agenda, a co-operative effort by industry and government to produce a blueprint for the sector's long-term growth strategy has been gestating for nearly a year.

It should be formally launched around the middle of this year, says Dept of Industry Tourism and Resources general manager for pharmaceuticals and emerging industry, Craig Pennifold,.

It will lay out a series of actions to implement a growth plan which industry and government representatives have thrashed out between them.

Since last May, a nation-wide series of workshops have involved 200 industry and government representatives directly and another 500 indirectly.

Participants have been drawn from the R&D sector, the finance, drug development and marketing communities and the biotech sector.