Introduction

Despite dramatic improvements in the quality and length of life of people in the developed world, over a billion people entered the 21st Century relatively unaffected by the previous century's health revolution. Nowhere is this disparity more evident than in the domain of public health and the contribution of biotechnology and genomics to society. Biotechnology has been defined as "the application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing of materials by biological agents to provide goods and services." This could include predictive, preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic technologies and also those technologies that are convergent between health and agricultural biotechnology.

Pakistan is a case in point. Its burgeoning population of over 145 million has over 40% living in abject poverty, maternal and infant mortality rates among the highest in the world. From a position where the country possessed sufficient capacity to research and produce childhood vaccines for its needs, it now largely relies upon imports with hardly any relevant research in this area. Realizing these issues, the government of Pakistan has recently established the Biotechnology Commission and a National Vaccine Research and Development Task Force.