54.3 F
San Diego
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

Biotech Scene Has Taiwanese Accent

Wan-Ho Shu came to the United States in the early 1980s seeking a top-notch education in science.

With an East Coast Ph.D. in polymer science, he headed west to tackle the burgeoning life science industry.

But after several years of working in large American companies or small biotechs that crumbled after a couple of years, like many Taiwanese scientists here, he began to think that starting his own firm was the only way to reach the executive chair.

So the eager scientist became a determined entrepreneur.

Since 1993, he has been the founder and president of San Diego’s Polymerex Medical Corp., which has about 10 employees and develops and manufactures catheters and stents used in minimally invasive procedures for vascular disease. The company has reached annual revenues as high as $1 million since its inception, but like most life science firms, has not yet been profitable, Shu said.

Estimates are rough, but unity and communication are increasing among the many local Taiwanese biotech executives.

Some say there are as many as 50 Taiwanese-owned life science companies in the area. With around 400 life science companies in San Diego County, that means Taiwanese could own about 12 percent of the industry’s local firms. Most of the Taiwanese firms range from as few as five employees to as many as 50, industry members say.

Joe Chou, the president of the Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce here, is heavily involved with San Diego’s chapter of the Taiwan-America Biotech Association. Chou said until now, TABA has been focused on intercontinental relations between Taiwan-based venture capitalists and San Diego life science firms.

“We’re going to put more emphasis on networking among the Taiwanese-owned companies here,” said Chou.

Charles C-Y Shih and many others have stories similar to Shu’s. In 1999, Shih co-founded AndroScience Corp., which now has around 30 employees. The company develops drugs to treat acne, loss of hair, prostate cancer and other diseases.

“You can almost see an Asian scientist in every biotech company here,” Shih said, adding later, “If you see an Asian in a management position, it’s probably because it’s their own company.”


Overseas Support

Taiwanese executives say most of the venture capital money invested in Taiwanese-owned life science companies in San Diego comes from Taiwan, where the government is pushing biotech, but where there are not yet as many promising firms in which to invest. At least two major biotechnology incubator parks recently opened in Taiwan, said Richard Lin, the president of Explora BioLabs, LLC, a contract research firm he started in 2004 after several years of working in other area biotech companies.

When Lin, who moved to America from Taiwan in 1986, saw a trend here of life science companies outsourcing research and manufacturing to China or other countries, he focused on the opportunity. His firm now handles such business for corporations as large as Pfizer, Inc., though most of his clients are small to midsize companies, Lin said.

“I feel that it was a more purposeful move on my part,” said Lin, who added that he did not use venture capital money to start his firm, and that contacts gained from his experience within the industry here allowed him to line up clients before he opened his doors.

Perhaps the top two local Taiwanese-owned biotech success stories are the former Pacific Biotech, which was sold to Eli Lily and Co. in the 1990s, executives said, and PharMingen, which was purchased by BD Bioscience, part of Becton, Dickinson and Co., one of the largest medical, diagnostics and bioscience companies in the country.

In a sense, the two firms stand as a sort of Hybritech of the Taiwanese life sciences community. Like the founders of the first San Diego biotech company, the entrepreneurs behind PharMingen and Pacific Biotech have gone on to found and foster other companies.

PharMingen was founded by local Taiwanese Ernie Huang and Gene Lay. In 2002, Lay founded San Diego-based BioLegend, Inc., which develops and manufactures antibodies for biomedical research. Huang recruited AndroScience’s Shih from the East Coast, where he had been teaching at a Wisconsin medical school, Shih said.


Seeking Leadership Roles

But Shih and Polymerex’s Shu said Asian scientists sometimes face additional obstacles in demonstrating their leadership.

“Our language training is a handicap for us,” Shih said.

Shu said he was repeatedly overlooked for promotions because he was seen as a workhorse.

“In a big corporation, they like us to work for them,” he said. “Everyone likes to have a Taiwanese work for them, but not a Taiwanese manager.

We’ve created so much technical contribution that we end up going out and getting our own company. That’s the way the stereotyping goes.”

Shih and Shu, who are in their 50s, may have had different experiences than those immigrants about 10 years younger, such as Lin and Chi-Chang Wu, senior scientist at Neurome, Inc.

Wu is the director of the area’s TABA board of directors.

He calls Taiwan an “innovative island,” and said the culture there naturally breeds more entrepreneurs.

“It’s inherent, and we were raised in that environment,” said Wu, who received a Ph.D. at UC San Diego. He thinks the city is a positive atmosphere for foreign entrepreneurs and calls the story of PharMingen “encouraging to a lot of Taiwanese.”

Several Taiwanese executives say San Diego likely has more Taiwanese-owned life science companies than any other U.S. city.

But fewer Taiwanese are seeking their education in the United States, says Shih, because the quality of life in Taiwan is improving, and the economy has boomed in the last 20 years.

“They are thinking very different now,” he said. “In my generation, we get our degree, but many of them now are thinking more money instead of science.”

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-