Back to Bizweek
SEARCH AND PRESS ENTER
Latest News

“Quo Vadis Biotechnology in Mauritius? By Dr Rattan Gujadhur”

In 2023-2024, I was honored to have been selected to lead the Mauritian Institute of Biotechnology. Through an international recruitment drive, the government had the urgent need to select a leader to promote the biotechnology sector, not as an experimental test run, but as a serious alternative to our classical industries (i.e. tourism, finance, sugar sector etc.). The Mauritius Institute of Biotechnology Ltd, coined MIBL, was instituted in 2021 to catalyze the growth of the Biotechnology sector in Mauritius. As the country was in the throes of the Covid Pandemic, MIBL was created as a response to learnings and experiences the country felt during these testing times. 

The Great Covid Debacle

Covid, as we all know, had an unprecedented effect on the lives of many in Africa. One of the glaring disappointments and aftereffects of Covid was the significant disparity in vaccine access between high income and low-and middle-income countries (LMIC). Over a year after the first Covid-19 vaccines were licensed, only 27.3% of people in Africa had received at least one dose of a licensed vaccine, compared with 80% and 75% of the populations in the United States and the European Union respectively. This inequity has understandably resulted in calls for increased investment in vaccine manufacturing capacity across Africa. However, lack of vaccine manufacturing capacity is a symptom of a much larger issue. The pandemic has highlighted the fragility of an African scientific ecosystem that is underfunded and currently unsustainable.

The unprecedented events taught us that beyond the logistics of securing vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs, the country needed a robust, flexible, and profitable biotechnology sector to ferment a new culture, and start a ‘live’ ecosystem of research & development and products commercialization. 

Mandate

The key mandate at MIBL was to further develop and grow the biotechnology sector. This included medical, agricultural, marine, industrial and environmental biotechnology. MIBL also had biotech knowledge and capacity building responsibility. MIBL endorsed its mandate through a series of key activities ranging from financial support and partnering, expansion of the pharmaceuticals and medical devices sectors, development and facilitation of Mauritian-made biotech products through collaboration globally and locally, agricultural techniques, nutraceuticals, ocean-based pharmacy, support for circular economy projects involving biotech, and analytical testing capabilities. In brief, the intent was excruciatingly honest and focused, and was designed to propel the biotech sector via a range of projects, small, medium and large.

Achievements

With a well-selected team of motivated staff, employed without any political interference, we selected a few high-powered staff members with the then board`s support. We realized the following in a very short time, but the implementation phases were heavily plagued by red tape and delays, which I expound on further below:

  • Launching of Africa RISE report on the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Mauritius, supported by EU INTPA.
  • Structuring of an investment framework – Appointment of experts for development of investment framework.
  • Signature of investment agreements with two start up development and manufacturing companies in Mauritius. Requests for funding for multiple new projects in all spheres of biotechnology were assessed. Request for key partnerships was under way.
  • Setting up of six Steering Committees to provide guidance, advice and recommendations to MIBL Board on matters related to MIBL Blue (marine), Red (medical), Green (agriculture), Grey (environment), White (industrial) and Orange (skills and capacity building) biotechnologies.
  • Advanced discussions started with the key Institutes in India and USA for the implementation of a biologics production facility, as well as ocean research initiatives, in Mauritius. A delegation from an Indian-Belgian consortium visited Mauritius to present findings. 
  • Drafting of the Green Biotechnology Report, and of a roadmap for the agricultural biotechnology sector, was initiated.

In broad strokes, MIBL were working on broad strategic initiatives, including the creation and sponsoring of an active biotechnology incubator, and would have added a venture studio or accelerator to the incubator strategy to increase the focus, budget, control, experience, and the likelihood of success of biotechnology start-ups and investors. 

This is how in our view, successful start-up culture/s have been boosted and jostled over the years in places like Silicon Valley and the East Coast of the United States, and we definitely had the ability and competence, in Mauritius, to start such a culture and lead the field regionally. 

Adding more mature start-ups through an accelerator attracting a venture studio with more focused value proposition aligned to the needs of specific corporations or industries, and specialized expertise, would have boosted credibility and increased the chances of quick wins in the shorter term. The incubator plan also needed to be supplemented by serious structural pharmaceutical regulatory reforms, securing mandate clarity for institutions, dedicated funds boosting research translation through academia-industry partnerships, global capacity building programs producing niche engineering and scientific talent pools, awareness drives improving accessibility to domestic support infrastructure for entrepreneurial ventures, and output tracking frameworks with modern IT tools and domain experts assessing progress through clear evaluation criteria and real-time project monitoring.

A one-stop-centre of excellence for Controlled Environmental Agriculture (CEA) was also seen as a must in Mauritius, just like was done in small-sized countries like Singapore, to reduce dependency on agro-produce imports in the country. This would have been the first phase to a grand and bold idea of enabling a center for agro-technology in Mauritius. I think it would have had a promising output. Another initiative which was in the process of being launched was an ocean-to-pharmacy pipeline of natural product-derived drugs, in Mauritius, that could then have been further extended to other natural products like “herbal medicines”. 

What were the challenges faced?

Despite the keen interest and support for the sector and its potential markets in western and ASEAN countries, we did foresee many deep-rooted implementation challenges. We knew we would have needed to upgrade traditional ways and processes and authentically adopt innovation. Whilst MIBL was spearheading the above bold initiatives, the targets could only be met through a general collaborative and synergetic efforts, regrouping all relevant players. Challenges we faced can be grouped as below, and one hopes the new teams and new government will carefully review these and abate them to promote the sector:

  • Mauritian scientific R&D is almost exclusively restricted to academic and public research institutions and government/private partnerships are bleak. Over dependence on the public sector has a negative effect on retention of scientific talent. In Ghana for instance, over 68% of funding for R&D (which includes salaries of academic and research staff) comes from the government, and well over 90% of this is spent in public institutions1. The disconnect between R&D in the private sector and the government sector in Mauritius is so glaring that when we invested in a bio-materials lab at the University of Mauritius, one only saw private sectors make the most of the tech initiative. Opportunities, and the culture of partnership between private sector and government sector, were sorely lacking. Much more needs to be done to encourage and promote private/public R&D partnerships. 
  • Scientific research needs to be decentralized, and environments created to establish incubators and innovation hubs. The speed of these ‘enabling’ activities is now critical. At MIBL, red tape, lack of understanding of board-level decision makers, interpersonal conflicts, sometimes stalled the nurturing environment.
  • Healthcare providers (both public and private) must embrace R&D as a key component of improving the quality of care they provide. The establishment of institutional R&D offices will ensure that such partnerships are mutually beneficial, and all data is securely and ethically managed. Mauritian pharma related medical devices development and exports have indeed grown significantly over the last 4-5 years, and have surpassed all expectations, so suggestions of boosting R&D investment will strongly take shape locally.
  • Global health partners need to set aside funds to support local start-ups, both as non-dilutive grants, but also by way of strategic investments. Additionally, facilitating access to business and investment consultancy support would be extremely important to young start-ups. In addition to directly investing themselves, global partners have a role to play in using their significant convening power to draw large investors into the ecosystem – highlighting the opportunities that African biotech companies present, not just in terms of return on investment, but also of the impact of the work being done.

Much remains to be done to harmonize bio-pharmaceutical regulations in the region. In a recent SADC forum, this was clearly pointed out by all members. A rigorous amount of collaboration is needed through the AMA (African Medicines Agency) to promulgate regionally adaptable pharmaceutical guidance that would be flexible for all African countries. Opportunities lie in not only harmonizing regulations across Africa, so we can tap into competencies in biopharma regionally, but in creating a sort of expanded biotech hub in Africa, supported by active government and private incubator partnerships.

Reference:

  1. https://speakingofmedicine.plos.org/2022/11/29/african-biotech-holds-the-key-to-transforming-not-just-the-health-of-african-people-but-our-economies-as-well/

About the Author

Dr Rattan Gujadhur is a graduate in Chemistry at the Polytechnic of North London. He returned to Mauritius in the early 1990s, worked briefly at Shell Mauritius Limited, then left for the US in 1999 after being awarded a teaching assistantship to read for a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts. He graduated with a PhD in 2003, after publishing several well-known and well-cited publications in the field of organic catalysis. He discovered a soluble Cu(I) catalyst for which he was awarded a prominent international patent. He also studied for an MBA at Gilead/Golden Gate University in San Francisco, and at UCI Irvine, with leadership courses in healthcare. Since 2003, he has worked mostly in the US bio-pharmaceutical industry, and at companies such as Gilead, Otsuka and CV Therapeutics. He was part of the product development team that progressed the Hepatitis C drug Harvoni to commercialization, and had the opportunity to work in multinational teams in Japan, Korea, India and China. In 2014/2015, he was part of a Gilead delegation who met the then President of Mauritius (Mrs Fakim) to discuss distribution of the Hep C drug locally. He currently works as Vice President of Chemistry Manufacturing and Controls at Bluejay Therapeutics, in the Bay Area, California. 

Skip to content