MALAYSIA’s rich biodiversity, and the traditional use of plants and herbs as medicines by different cultures, provide opportunities for identifying useful compounds in plant and animal species that can tap the estimated US$100 billion (US$1=RM3.80) global pharmaceutical market.

Dr. Robert K. Lee, Director of Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s division of health sciences and technology, said these opportunities can be realised by establishing a database and a chemical library to document and house useful indigenous species or their extracts.

He said the database and chemical library will constitute a regional and international reference centre for scientific or medicinal information related to the bioactive extracts derived from Malaysia.

"Such a chemical library may also promote technology transfer, research commercialization and subsequent partnership with other research centres or industry," Lee said at a seminar on Investment opportunities in the agriculture sector in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

He said the development of the chemical library and database may be facilitated by the contribution of Malaysian scientists, and by the collaborations of Malaysia Universities, international universities, research centre and the biopharmaceutical industry.

Lee said it will also help to have rapid access to technical information and capabilities, increase support for basic and applied research, and have necessary equipment and chemical reagents necessary for research and development (R&D).

"These efforts will benefit from the participation of the investment community, federal funding agencies, innovators and entrepreneurs," he added.

Lee said Malaysia is one of the world’s hotspots of biodiversity. There are 12,000 flowering plant species in Malaysia that are thought to have medicinal purposes, but only 100 species have been systematically evaluated for medicinal properties.

"The search for new, medicines can motivate scientific and technological exchange for improving the healthcare of communities worldwide. The potential economic value of natural resources might well be realised by discovering novel, non-obvious uses for medicinal plants, or by discovering new methods for isolating bioactive chemicals," he said.

Lee said the intellectual property generated by such discoveries can be the basis for the further development of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in Malaysia.

He said the high diversity of species in tropical forest can also be mixed blessing, because high species diversity is often correlated with low species density.

"There is a limit to the total number of species that can be packed into a given area of tropical forest. Agriculture biotechnology can play a critical role in the sustainable development of biodiversity by the use of facilities to pollinate, replenish or to cultivate such low-destiny species," Lee added.

The one-day seminar was organised by the Ministry of Agriculture.