Building Capacity in the Life Sciences

Devising innovative strategies that will bring all developing countries into the "biological fold" is the challenge for the scientific community. So says Mohammed Hassam , executive director of The Academy for the Developing World (TWAS) in Trieste, Italy in an article "Building capacity in the life sciences in the developing world" published in the journal Cell.

Hassan says that a key challenge still  faced by developing countries is building basic scientific capacity through education and training as well as provision of laboratories. Countries like China have built a formidable infrastructure in the life sciences particularly bioinformatics, genomics, and stem cell research. Nevertheless, he notes that a new gap in capacity has emerged between scientifically proficient developing countries and scientifically lagging developing countries. Efforts are being made to forge new levels of cooperation on science and technology particularly in Africa.

The TWAS head forwards the recommendation that national, merit-based science academies "represent an often-neglected but potentially significant set of institutions that could play a vital role in helping to build capacity in the life sciences in developing countries and in bridging the science-society gap in the biological sciences."

See the full article in the November 2, 2007 issue of the journal Cell at http://www.cell.com/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS0092867407013384, or email Mohammed Hassan at mhassan@twas.org.