Regulating Bioprospecting: Institutions for Drug Research, Access and Benefit-Sharing

T policy brief summarizes the main arguments and conclusions of a forthcoming book by United Nations University Press, which examines the regulation of bioprospecting for drug research from an interdisciplinary law and economics perspective. Bioprospecting was once touted as a promising opportunity for collaborative ventures in biotechnology-based research and development (R&D) between the genetic resources-rich South and the technology-rich North, especially in the case of drug research. However this promise has yet to materialize. Understanding why this is so is a central policy question for countries in the South that wish to leverage their biodiversity endowments in the development process. A new book, authored by Padmashree Gehl Sampath (UNU Press, 2005), examines optimal property rights structures and institutional mechanisms for regulating bioprospecting for drug research. Focusing on the economics of the contracting process, it shows that the rights exchanged at each stage of drug R&D based genetic resources are complementary to one another. Therefore, if they are to realize the potential of bioprospecting for sustainable development and biodiversity conservation, source (developing) countries need to ensure that their attempts to define and enforce rights for access to genetic resources and traditional medicinal knowledge are not isolated from the drug R&D process.