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| History |
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| Off to a Late Start as Compared to the U.S. and Europe but Catching Up in the Area of Biotech Applications |
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It was around 1980 that biotechnology became a boom in Japan. With a shorter history in such research as compared with the United States and Europe, Japan lagged significantly behind these regions that were especially ahead of Japan in basic biotechnological research. However, Japan is catching up at a rapid pace in the application of the technology, such as in the form of concrete products.
High growth of the scope of the biotechnology market is continuing in Japan. Worth about 200 billion yen in 1980, this market expanded to roughly 1 trillion 433 billion yen in 2001. In the promotional government measures for the development of the biotechnology industry, released by what was then the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) in 1999, the forecast was that biotechnology would become a 25 trillion yen market in 2010. |
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| Efforts to Link the Human Genome to New Drug Discovery Begins |
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The decoding of the human genome, at the forefront of genetic research, was completed in 2000. In the field of pharmaceutical production, efforts to link genetic functions to drug discovery based on these results have begun. Basic research in the fields of agriculture and chemical engineering are also advancing. There are prospects now that increased food production and the conservation of energy in chemical synthesis processes will be realized in the near future.
Nanobiology, an integration of nanotechnology and biology; bioremediation, a technique for removing environmental pollutants by utilizing biological agents such as microorganisms and plants; combinatorial bioengineering, a method for analyzing proteins; and molecular agriculture, for the production of substances that are beneficial to plants are also among the technologies in the limelight as being promising.
In July 2002, the Biotechnology Strategy Council was convened by the Japanese government. It drew up the Biotechnology Strategy Guidelines with the aim of enhancing industrial competitiveness. It contained an action plan to increase the national R&D budget at a pace greater than two times in five years. It also outlined prioritized and focused promotion of R&D in fields such as advanced pharmaceuticals, areas of integration with information technology as well as in the development of measurement and analytical equipment. |
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