Biotechnology to be 21st-century industry: expert

Chief of a leading global biotechnology company Life Technologies (Life Tech) on Sunday said that biotechnology and life sciences would be the prime driver of the economic growth in the 21st century.

Gregory T. Lucier, chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of the U.S.-based enterprise, told Xinhua that there had been a world-wide recognition that the 21st century would be about life sciences.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, Lucier pointed to energy as a sector that could be potentially revolutionized by life sciences and biotechnology.

"If we are able to develop a new form of energy through biotechnology, we could produce really all the gasoline our cars need, and we could make countries energy self-sufficient by using bio-fuels," Lucier told Xinhua.

Bio-fuels won't solve every problem, but they would be an important piece of the answers to the future energy, and they could at least be an important piece of the solutions to the future transportation fuels, he said.

In addition to the energy industry where "we can use biotechnologies to completely rewrite the rules of a whole industry," agriculture served as another good example of the real differences that life sciences can make, said Lucier, who also serves on the board of the Burnham Institute of Medical Research.

Thanks to biotechnologies, we would be able to feed all the people on this planet by developing new ways to make our crops more disaster-resistant, less water-reliant, more productive and growing faster, he added.

The CEO picked China as a country which has shown a very substantial commitment to biotechnology and life sciences and invested heavily in developing biotechnology research institutes and nurturing life scientists.

The economic downturn and debt crisis saw both the European Union and the United States decrease investment in biotechnologies last year, resulting in a slowdown in Life Tech's businesses in the two markets, Lucier said.

However, "the situation is stabilizing with both the EU and the U.S. governments having decided to recover funding for bio-medical research this year."

"Our outlook is good, because we are growing our top line, we are growing our bottom line and we are developing lots of new innovations that we think will be crucial for us to go through the difficult times," Lucier said.