Korea Vows Better Management of Bio Resources
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
The government will establish an integrated database of the country's biological resources, intending to improve the efficiency of information management, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said Wednesday.
The development and management of biological resources is critical to the country's aspirations to strengthen its position in the biotechnology industry, ministry officials claimed, considering the immense commercial potential in finding new drug substances and other materials.
The idea will undergo a trial run to find the next star anise, the traditional Chinese medicine herb that went on to be a key substance for the antiviral drug ''Tamiflu,'' which countries around the world raced to stock up on to combat the bird flu and H1N1 epidemic.
The ministry designated the Korea Bio-Information Center (KOBIC) as the country's ``national biological research resources information center,'' having it double as the control tower for the bio-resources data, which is kept by different government organizations.
Aside from the KOBIC, the National Science Museum, the Korea National Research Resource Center and the Korea Biological Resource Center were all designated as agencies to manage the information.
Both the KOBIC and the Korea Biological Resource Center are sub-organizations of the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology.
``Only about 1 percent of the 35 billion types of biological research resources around the world have been discovered and applied for human use in medicine. We believe that the commercial potential could be endless, and a better management of the database would help biotech companies create more added-value products and treatments,'' said an official from the ministry's future core technology division.
``Following the revision of the Biological Resources Management Law last year, the establishment of the national biological research resources information center represents a key step in managing the data on natural resources as national assets.''
Advanced nations, such as the United States, Japan and some European countries, have been moving quickly to improve their management of bio-resources and competing to stay ahead in the race to utilize these means for advancement in medicine and industrial benefits.
These countries have already established national management systems for bio-resources in order to integrate the information kept by different agencies and research units, an area where Korea has been lagging behind, ministry officials said.
``Previously, the Korean agencies had no network to share their information, and this added to the difficulties of researchers and companies who needed to access these resources and their data. Some of the data on bio-resources, which needed taxpayer's money to be discovered, were being kept by the individual scientists, only to vanish at the end of the projects,'' said the ministry official.
``The establishment of an integrated national database will allow researchers to access secured information and the latest advancements research has made. The improved accessibility will allow the bio-resources to be used in a variety of areas.''