Acta Chimica Slovaca (ACS) publishes papers on fundamental and applied aspects of chemistry, biochemistry, chemical technology, chemical engineering and process control, biotechnology and food technology. Welcome are also topics which include chemical aspects of materials, physical chemistry and chemical physics, analytical chemistry, macromolecular chemistry and biomedical engineering.

Biotechnology commercialization in Vysegrad Pact countries

Dana Ukropcova, Ernest Sturdik * a

BioScience Slovakia Limited, Kostliveho 10, Bratislava, SK-821 03, Slovak Republic
a Institute of Biochemistry, Nutrition and Health Protection, Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology, Slovak University of Technology, Radlinskeho 9, Bratislava, SK-812 37, Slovak Republic

E-mail: * ernest.sturdik@stuba.sk

Abstract: The transformation to bioeconomy is a challenging task for developed countries and even more for emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe. New life sciences clusters emerge and new players from public and private sector appear on the international biotechnology scene. Universities are conscious of the adversities in their future strategy and it is up them how quickly they adapt and how they withstand the competitive universities. Further, it is up to regional and national policies to launch programmes to enhance and ‘sell’ science. It is obvious that Vysegrad Pact countries are fully aware of the life science and biotechnology commercialization, conditions and consequences of these processes. In the BioPolis project, vertical policy instruments (biotechnology specific) and horizontal policy instruments (generic or not biotechnology specific) are included. Vysegrad Pact countries transform from centrally planned to market economies and at the same time from traditional to knowledge-based, even bio-economy as seen in developed countries. It is observed that those countries performing best in the commercialization of biotechnology were a strong commitment to supporting basic scientific research. Lack of incentives and missing bridges between industry and academia are institutional and network failures. Government bodies should consider the definition and implementation of public initiatives to meet the specific needs of spin-off companies in the maturation phase. The paper follows and summarizes indicators of biotechnology commercialization in four European countries of Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic.

Keywords: biotechnology commercialisation, spin- off, Vysegrad Pact countries

Full paper in Portable Document Format: acs_0075.pdf

Acta Chimica Slovaca, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2010, pp. 130—141