BioWorld International Correspondent

Officials at Denmark's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and at India's Department of Biotechnology are finalizing the text of a joint accord on biotechnology research the countries expect to sign in India shortly.

Merete Reuss, a divisional head at the Danish Ministry, told BioWorld International that the accord will take the form of a frame agreement, leaving individual institutions to define their own bilateral arrangements. "I think it will be a framework for future collaboration between universities and industry," she said.

The agreement follows a series of high-level exchanges between the countries in recent weeks. Manju Sharma, secretary of India's Department of Biotechnology, led a delegation to Denmark, which included officials from the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi, India, and the National Centre for Cell Sciences in Pune, India, in September. At the India-EU business summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, last week, which was intended to explore ways of promoting trade between the two regions, biotechnology was the subject of one of four sectoral sessions.

Ausaf Sayeed, first secretary at the Indian embassy in Copenhagen, said the upcoming agreement will enable the countries to exploit synergies between their respective sectors. "Denmark has strengths in biotechnology, which everybody is aware of," he said.

Biotechnology is still an emerging field in India. According to a position paper prepared in advance of last week's summit, the country is home to just 15 modern biotechnology companies, and its domestic market for biotechnology products derived from recombinant technology is worth just US$150 million at present. That is expected to grow by up to 40 percent annually, however, and, because of its population, India is one of the world's largest markets for vaccines.

Sayeed said he expects the agreement to lead to a broad range of research collaborations and exchanges in areas such as transgenic crops, plant tissue culture, proteomics, vaccine and drug development, diagnostics and animal biotechnology.