Bio Asia 2004, a global bio business forum in Hyderabad

The Genome Valley, a 200-acre Agri-Biotech Park in the Icrisat campus
Hyderabad, a 218-acre Marine Biotech Park in Visakhapatnam, a venture capital
fund for biotech indu-stry, a biotech policy and now Bio Asia 2004. As its
latest initiative for the biotechnology sector Andhra Pradesh govern-ment has
decided to promote Bio Asia–the Global Bio Busi-ness Forum.

BP Acharya, Secretary (Indus-tries and Commerce), AP Gove-rnment, announced
that the inaugural biotech event of the AP Government will be held at Hitex in
Hyderabad from February 26-28, 2004.

Chairman of the biotech advisory committee Dr D Bala-subrahmanian gave a low
down on the business centric event spanning three days packed with 11 seminars
bringing companies, governments, tho-ught leaders and technologists from across
the globe, especi-ally across Asia to transact business and build global
alliances and products.

"Bio Asia 2004 will consist of a tradeshow, a conference, a B2B forum
and a knowledge pavilion," said Balasubhrahma-nian. He further added that
60 internationally acclaimed spea-kers would be coming over to participate in
the event of which Prof William Rutter, Dr RA Mashelkar, Dr MS Swamina-than and
DR Manju Sharma have confirmed participation.

According to the organizers, of the 1,044 sq mt exhibition space, 574 sq mt
has already been booked. "The idea is to promote this as Asia’s biggest
biotech event and get most of the Asian countries to partici-pate," said
Balasubhrahmanian.

Highlighting the countries that are already in the forefront of biotech he
said, "China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singa-pore and India have already
made big strides in different areas of biotechnology now we need to share the
experiences and collaborate to emerge stronger, faster."

According to Balasubrahma-nian, Thailand, China, Israel, San Francisco, Iowa,
North Carolina, Malaysia and Sri Lanka have confirmed participation.



CyberMedia News Service

Hyderabad