Know your place
A chance to break through
Pavel Volchkov, Izvestia
This year, the Federal Scientific and Technical Program for the Development of Genetic Technologies for the next nine years will come into force in Russia. Its goal is the accelerated development of genetic engineering, the development of biological drugs for healthcare, biotechnologies for agriculture and industry. Genetic engineering is in its infancy, it is advisable to make maximum efforts now to turn the catching-up industry into a leading one in 20 years.
There is a very strong scientific school in Russia and quite a large number of people with good mathematical, IT and bio-education. We are traditionally successful in these areas. Bioinformatics is an area where genetics and computer science merge, and I think we could make a breakthrough here. In addition, this is a modern direction, important for the agricultural sector, the biotechnology sector, for the chemical industry – where components based on enzymes of biological nature are used for many productions. Huge in area Russia is not going anywhere away from agriculture, so developing a high-performance agrotech is also an important economic task.
Modern genetics ceases to be only a laboratory science when scientists in white coats pipette something in test tubes. Genetic engineering is moving towards big data analysis – and predicting the effects of a particular therapy. We can certainly participate in this. I am sure the Nobel Prize will be given in the future for the improvement and creation of biological tools for the treatment of diseases and other bioengineering tasks. Since the topic is not yet so well researched, we are able to achieve great success in it. This is our chance to break through.
What's in the West? His experience in genetic engineering shows that it is startups, not giant companies, that are developing this area. There are many examples: Illumina, Oxford Nanopore. They won the race to create sequencing (genome reading) from such giants as Thegmo Fisher Scientific and Roche. This is a good indicator – it means that large corporations can also be bypassed. You just need to build a competent trajectory of withdrawal from the idea of a company that could fight for world leadership. It seems to me that the main task of the program should be to create precedents – at least four or five successful companies. In addition, this contributes to a serious increase in the GDP of the industry and the whole country. This will allow us to create new areas other than oil and gas that can earn money.
Unfortunately, the time of fundamental science has passed. Of course, it needs to be developed, but a lot of global knowledge has already been formulated. Of course, it is important that this particular program and its implementation have both fundamental and educational parts – personnel training is still very important.
However, it is necessary to focus on the translational aspects – the emergence of real players in the economic sector who would grow in this direction and become not just national industry leaders, but world leaders. Otherwise, the game is not worth the candle. It is important not only to train good specialists, but also to create production in the form of real products so that taxes from this sector become drivers of fundamental and applied research. It is important to create a real market – internal, and integrate into the external one. How to do it? Set exactly these tasks in the program.
In order for technological processes to appear in this chain – from the generation of intellectual property to the company that brings the product to the regional and international market, the process needs to be regulated and completely closed in Russia. To some extent, it should be made open, but it should be profitable to do it in our country. Private capital is very sensitive to conditions, to margins. So far, the system of entry and exit of investors in startups in Russia is not so simple: there is no culture, no accumulated volume of transactions. Therefore, it is obvious to any investor that it is more convenient to develop startups in Silicon Valley, Boston or somewhere else.
There is also a more global task – to create a consumer domestic market for genetic medical, agro- and biotechnologies. When we declare such a large-scale goal, we outline the most strategically important sector. It should be solved by the synergistic interaction of different departments – from the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Also, the successful implementation of the program for the development of genetic technologies will be facilitated by its integration with those that already exist – the agricultural industry development program Strategy 2030 and the Pharma 2030 program.
Of course, if this program had been launched 10 years earlier, it would have been even better. But now it is also more relevant than ever – to create an industry, a driver of this direction is needed, and it is the development of a state program.
The author is the head of the Laboratory of Genomic Engineering at MIPT
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru