Biotechnology as the name implies is the combination of Bio and Technology. It is an area of biology which includes use of live organism and bio processes in engineering, technology. In short Biotechnology is technical application which can use live organism and biological system techniques to manufacture or change any product or process it for any specified type of use. Any Biotechnology Company or organization is a firm which uses biotechnology for manufacturing or designing any product or service.

List of Biotechnology Companies:

A. Companies in US

Abraxis Bioscience, Acorda Therapeutics, Alkermes, Amgen, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Arena Pharmaceuticals, ArrayBioPharma, Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Biogen Idec, Carrington Laboratories, Celgene, Cephalon, Cerus, Coley Pharmaceutical Group, Cubist Pharmaceuticals, CuraGen, CV Therapeutics, Cytogen, Enzo Biochem, Enzon Pharmaceuticals, Genentech,GenVec, Genzyme, Gilead Sciences, Human Genome Sciences, Idenix Pharmaceuticals, Indevus Pharmaceuticals, InterMune, Inspire Pharmaceuticals, Imclone Systems, ImmunoGen, Isis Pharmaceuticals, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, LifeCell, Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Maxygen, Medarex, Medivir Group, MedImmune, MGI Pharma, Micromet, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Monogram Biosciences, Myriad Genetics, Nabi Bio pharmaceuticals, Nektar Therapeutics, Neurocrine Biosciences, NPSPharmaceuticals, Omrix Bio pharmaceuticals, Oscient Pharmaceuticals, OSI Pharmaceuticals, Palatin Technologies, PDLBioPharma, Pharmion, Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Replidyne, Tanox, Targacept, Trimeris, United Therapeutics, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, ViaCell, ViroPharma, Xoma, ZymoGenetics.

B. Companies in India

Alembic Ltd, Amersham Pharmacia Biotech Asia-Pacific Ltd, Bharat Serums and Vaccines Ltd, Biocon, Biotech Consortium India Ltd, Brain Wave Bioinformatics Ltd, Catalyst Pharma Consulting, Chemitech Foundation, Colour-Chem Ltd, Dr Reddy’s Labs, Excel Industries Ltd, Haitanya Healthcare Ecom Ltd, Hi Tech Bio Labs, Landpower Biotech Ltd, Life Science Technology Lupin Ltd, Nicholas Piramal India Ltd, Ocimum Biosolutions Ltd, Serum Institute of India, Shantha Biotechnics Private Ltd.

C. Other companies

There are many other companies like Ambrilia Biopharma, AEterna Zentaris, Cangene, QLT, Bioniche Life Sciences (Canada),Protherics, Acambis, Vernalis (UK), Genmab, Bavarian Nordic (Denmark), Vitrolife (Sweden), MediGene, MorphoSys, GPC Biotech (Germany), Peptech, Life Therapeutics (Australia), IsoTis (Switzerland), Crucell (Netherlands), Sinovac Biotech (China),Innogenetics (Belgium) too in biotechnology.

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Commerce is understood as any activity that creates wealth. For the past few decades, Biotechnology has been seen as an industrial means to generate wealth, most likely by adopting a ‘buying-selling’ model. Well!Biotechnology , in purest understanding, intends to tap a living process, most likely through gene manipulation, for contributing, directly or indirectly, towards improving the quality of human life. In the spate of economic struggle, states and corporations have started seeing Biotechnology as a core idea, systematized in a larger commercial cum industrial procedure for producing goods, to be sold for profit.

The Biotechnology products

Insulin has long been used by medics to control Diabetes. The recombinant protein is obtained from insulin secreting cultures, transformed through microbial bio techniques. As a matter of fact, some other approved products including antibiotics, fermented beverages, enzymes, bio degradable plastic etc. Are popularly used and now socially accepted. A longer list of newly researched products, still under development as a product line, is much waited for being introduced in the fast growing markets of developing nations. Moreover, the goods in this case are just not limited to be lifeless. The latest version of advancement through Biotechnology is to produce, in large-scale, germ plasm that grows into plant and live stock which is disease resistant and better yielding.

The sociopolitical resistance

People still have hunger pangs while food security bills are lingering in the Parliament. About a situation, when new concepts face allegations and non acceptance, there is nothing new. Genetically Modified food is often dismissed for harboring polluted DNA, once out for cultivation, would have no control from becoming promiscuous with the ‘natural’ variety. But why do we not resist the chemicals we have used for decades to voraciously grow crops and often ripen them artificially, with the same zest.

Well, the answer lies with us i.e. We dare to use the modern technology or bow before the conservative and orthodox methods. This is a fascinating field that has grown by leaps and bounds. Hence, we should look forward and seeing the advantages adopt Biotechnology with open hands.

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Biotechnology is undoubtedly the technology of the future for it not only presents exceptional opportunities, but also gives hope for a better future with better diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In terms of potential and growth, it is not much different from the mystical dragon, and since 2012 is the year of the dragon, it is expected that it would bring in loads of good news and prosperity for this new branch of science.
The good news
For biotechnology, the last year has been strong and monumental with Tax Incentive Legislation being passed in Australia and a very strong and consistent growth in the sector which was recently followed by good news, the Senate Inquiry of the gene patents bill. Since the last year, the Australian Biotechnology has been included amongst the fifth most innovative biotech nations in the world (according to the Scientific American World View). This trend is continuing in the current year, as Australia has shown great potential in developing biotech related agricultural, medical and even environmental research.
The companies of Australian Biotech are confident that the New Year would definitely be the best and until now with tremendous growth in the sector it has proved this. Even the new startup biotech companies in Australia now stand a better chance with the Tax Incentive’s 45% refundable component, even the large corporations would now be able to reduce their R&D expenses by as much as 10%. Such a healthy growth favoring environment has allowed the Australian Biotech companies to make a mark globally and have a steadily rising status even in the competitive markets of US and Europe.
Conclusion
The Australian Biotech industry now needs to revamp itself and embrace a more authentic and transparent management. There should be better communication between the management and the stakeholders. The opportunities are in plenty and the industry environment very supportive, hence the companies should make the most of it and truly let the biotech dragon rise in this year of the dragon.

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€3m to support skills development in biotechnology sector

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Early stages of the year 2012 have resulted into a great beginning for the entire biotechnology industry. This has led to a whooping increase in the NASDAQ Biotechnology index, which is currently 80% higher than before. The industry is recovering really fast from the previous economic crisis. An increase in the funding for the biotech industry has been recently reported by the GIA (Global Industry Analysts). Various investing opportunities in the field of biotechnology, equity researches in the field of Elite Pharmaceuticals and Aeterna Zentaris Inc., have been put forth by the Paragon report.
GIA has come up with a wonderful prediction of a whooping US$320 billion increase in funding for research and development by the year 2015. This includes expansion of this industry in medical sciences as well as agriculture. There are various government initiatives in the pipeline which would help in driving growth in this industry. GIA further explains that various developing industry markets like China and India can emerge as useful industrial and agricultural biotechnology markets, as they have witnessed increase in income levels and population. These countries are developing into a great hub for biotech drugs as they come with a great and rich talent pool and reduced cost of investments. This was recently stated by GIA in a press release. Various oral sustained and controlled drugs and products have already been developed by Elite Pharmaceuticals Inc. The strategy of Elite focuses on bringing in various partner companies in the product management life cycle. This has led to a vast improvement of various off-patent products of drugs. It was only during the last week that Elite announced its initial shipment of the drug methadone hydrochloride (10mg tabs) to one of its wholly owned subsidiary,The Pharma Network, LLC, as well as Ascend Laboratories, LLC. This was done in regards with the commercial manufacturing and supply agreement. Aeterna Zentaris has developed various drugs for oncology researches. It has also proven quite beneficial for investigating treatments for different cancers like multiple myeloma, ovarian, colorectal, bladder and prostrate cancers.

The paragon report for such investigations and upswings in biotechnology has been compensated by various third party organizations for advertising requirements.

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Technology that makes use of any kind of living organism, for example, micro organisms, is known as biotechnology. Modern medical science, especially biotechnology, has emerged as a booming profitable business in the last few decades. Perceiving further growth in the sector, venture capitalists have increased their investments in this field. However promising the sector looks, venture capitalists are wary of investing their money in the startup firms owing to the risks involved and doubts about their sustainability.
What the report says?
The national venture capitalist Association and Pricewaterhouse Cooper Ltd. reported that $4.73 billion was spent by venture firms on 446 biotechnology companies in 2011 while only 153 pharmaceutical companies and equipment companies were able to receive their first funding from the venture capitalists, thus making it the lowest since 1996.
The number of new firms that have been registered with Food and Drug Administration has also gone up. The rise is calculated of about 43%. Out of these registered companies, only 13% some of them owe their success to venture capital funds.
This decline in the funding for startup biotech companies would affect the future innovation in this sector because of which we would see less number of innovations in the biotechnology field.
Summary
Venture capitalists are profit driven people. They decide their own rules before investing in a biotech company while entrepreneurs in this field are idea driven. The idea that they might have hit upon during their academic years might take a little longer to translate into commercial success. The perspective with venture capitalists is generally for 10 years or less than that. Therefore, they are averse to funding projects that may require more than 10 years to be a success, which is generally the case with most of these companies. Hence, we see a decline in funding at the outset. But, the need is to be more patient and have faith in the entrepreneur and his idea so that future innovation is not affected.

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Biotechnology industry expected to grow unceasingly

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Background:
Direct conversion of solar energy and carbon dioxide to drop in fuel molecules in a single biological system can be achieved from fatty acid-based biofuels such as fatty alcohols and alkanes. These molecules have similar properties to fossil fuels but can be producedby photosynthetic cyanobacteria.
Results:
Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 mutant strains containing either overexpression or deletion of the slr1609 gene, which encods an acyl-ACP synthetase (AAS), have been constructed. The complete segregation and deletion in all mutant strains was confirmed by PCR analysis. Blocking fatty acid activation by deleting slr1609 gene in wild-type Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 leds to a doubling of the amount of free fatty acids and a decrease of alkane production by up to 90 percent. Overexpression of slr1609 gene in the wild-type Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 had no effect on the production of either free fatty acids or alkanes. Overexpression or deletion of slr1609 gene in the Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 mutant strain with the capability of making fatty alcohols by genetically introducing fatty acyl-CoA reductase respectively enhanced or reduced fatty alcohol production by 60 percent.
Conclusions:
Fatty acid activation functionalized by the slr1609 gene is metabolically crucial for biosynthesis of fatty acid derivatives in Synechocystis sp. PCC6803. It is necessary but not sufficient for efficient production of alkanes. Fatty alcohol production can be significantly improved by the overexpression of slr1609 gene.Source:
http://www.biotechnologyforbiofuels.com/rss/

Background:
Enzymatic hydrolysis, the rate limiting step in the process development for biofuel, is always hampered by its low sugar concentration. High solid enzymatic saccharification could solve this problem but has several other drawbacks such as low rate of reaction. In the present study we have attempted to enhance the concentration of sugars in enzymatic hydrolysate of delignified Prosopis juliflora, using a fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis approach.
Results:
The enzymatic hydrolysis was carried out at elevated solid loading up to 20% (w/v) and a comparison between kinetics of batch and fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis was carried out using kinetic regimes. Under batch mode, the actual sugar concentration values at 20% initial substrate consistency were found deviated from the predicted values and the maximum sugar concentration obtained was 80.78 g/L, which on using fed-batch strategy was enhanced to the final sugar concentration of 127 g/L. The batch and fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysates were fermented with Saccharomyces cerevisiae and ethanol production of 34.78 g/L and 52.83 g/L, respectively, were achieved. Furthermore, model simulations showed that higher insoluble solids in the feed resulted in both smaller reactor volume and shorter residence time.
Conclusion:
Fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis is an efficient procedure for enhancing the sugar concentration in the hydrolysate. Restricting the process to suitable kinetic regimes could result in higher conversion rates.Source:
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Background:
Use of crude ligninase of bacterial origin is one of the most promising ways to improve the practical biodegradation of lignocellulosic biomass. However, lignin is composed of diverse monolignols with different abundance levels in different plant biomass and requires different proportions of ligninase to realize efficient degradation. To improve activity and reduce cost, the simultaneous submerged fermentation of laccase and lignin peroxidase (LiP) from a new bacterial strain, Streptomyces cinnamomensis, was studied by adopting formulation design, principal component analysis, regression analysis and unconstrained mathematical programming.
Results:
The activities of laccase and LiP from S. cinnamomensis cultured with the optimal medium formulations were improved to be five to eight times of their initial activities, and the measured laccase:LiP activity ratios reached 0.1, 0.4 and 1.7 when cultured on medium with formulations designed to produce laccase:LiP complexes with theoretical laccase:LiP activity ratios of 0.05 to 0.1, 0.5 to 1 and 1.1 to 2.
Conclusion:
Both the laccase and LiP activities and also the activity ratio of laccase to LiP could be controlled by the medium formulation as designed. Using a crude laccase-LiP complex with a specially designed laccase:LiP activity ratio has the potential to improve the degradation of various plant lignins composed of diverse monolignols with different abundance levels.Source:
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