Blogging Biodiversity

In a June 1st article from Nature, Rex Dalton explores new initiatives at Costa Rica’s National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) that could help to ’save’ the institution. (I say ’save’ in quotes as INBio has had financial problems in the past and has survived; I find it hard to believe it would have collapsed or will collapse this time around.) I’ve been a bit slow blogging this one as I wanted to actually read the article before commenting on it, and, with Nature’s content not generally being available online, it took me a while to get to a library to get a copy.

The article is very interesting. It describes INBio’s past collaborations and bioprospecting work and outlines new contracts and research that are just getting under way. The premise is that the past work has not generated significant revenue thus jeopardizing the continued existence of INBio. Will the new projects create a more secure future?

One of the new projects is a public-private partnership funded through the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) program of the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the U.S. In addition to INBio, the project includes university-based researchers from the U.S. as well as the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. The new ICBG project is designed to learn from the experience of an earlier ICBG in Costa Rica where

any compounds of interest left Costa Rica, disappearing behind the proprietary walls of corporate science.

In contrast, the new project is designed “to be as open as possible about any potential new drug candidates.” This includes making the data publicly accessible:

in a database containing information such as where the compounds were collected and under what conditions. Clardy [the project leader from Harvard Medical School] foresees an eventual library with some 5,000 to 10,000 compounds collected during the project. The database could even contain details on how compounds respond in various screening tests against pathogens, information that is usually considered proprietary. Clardy’s group would get first shot at studying any promising disease-fighting compounds. But eventually the data would enter the publicly accessible ChemBank.

I think it’s great that the research generated by the project will be publicly available. It can allow others to build on the initial work and may lead to new leads that the current researchers do not consider. It could also mean that leads that are not pursued by the current project partners may be pursued by others. Indeed, Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb - past INBio partners - are accused in the article of identifying interesting compounds extracted from Costa Rican biodiversity but not pursuing them beyond initial testing.

My only question is whether, once the research results become public information, will there still be an obligation on anyone who uses the information to develop a new product to negotiate a benefit-sharing agreement with INBio? Presumably if these ‘follow-on’ researchers require samples of the original biodiversity to do the research, they will have to enter into an ABS agreement with INBio in order to gain access to the resources themselves. But if they somehow are able to obtain access to the resources through other means - other countries, genebanks, third party transfers, etc. - will INBio lose the benefit-sharing opportunity?

A further point of interest from the article is that if Novartis wants to further develop any of the material collected and examined as part of the project, the company will have to negotiate a benefit-sharing agreement with INBio. This means that INBio has not locked itself into benefit-sharing arrangements at the very beginning of the project when the potentials are much more unknown. It should allow INBio to enter into any eventual negotiations with Novartis in a more informed position that will allow the Institute to negotiate an agreement that will better support its needs and objectives. As Rodrigo Gamez, President of INBio’s governing body comments, the past experiences mean

We have developed a capacity to negotiate.

Finally, the article does point to some successes from INBio’s past. These include licensing fees of approximately $6,000 (I believe that’s US dollars) per year paid to INBio and Costa Rica’s Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) by Diversa. The money is a percentage of Diversa’s earnings from the sale of two products developed from Costa Rican resources. (See “Products generate resources for conservation”, INBio news, 10 October 2005.)

For more information, you can also see the NIH’s press release from when the ICBG grant was announced:
“Fogarty Announces Awards for Biodiversity-based Drug Discovery Research” NIH News, 3 January 2006

Posted on June 19th, 2006 under ABS, CBD, Intellectual property •  Print This Post •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback