Singapore`s biotechnology push

  • 19/12/2004

  • International Herald Tribune (Bangkok)

Singapore has seen the future - and it is filled with innovations like urine-powered batteries, body parts produced from stem cells and contact lenses that exude drugs into your eyes. Faced with competition from China and Malaysia in shipping and electronics, the city is more than doubling the amount it will spend on biotechnology to 12 billion Singapore dollars, or $7 billion, for the next five years, from 5 billion dollars between 2001 and 2005, the government has said. Singapore's biotechnology effort has attracted researchers like Alan Colman, co-creator of the world's first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, and Ki Bang Lee, a South Korean who invented the urine-activated battery.