SECOND EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON BINASIA JANUARY 2006, BANGKOK COUNTRY REPORT: MONGOLIA Ts.Oyunsuren Center for Biotechnology, Institute of Biology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences

Biotechnology in Mongolia Mongolia, being an agricultural country, has a long history of traditional biotechnology. Traditional biotechnology has been playing an important role in the fulfillment of the basic needs of nomads daily life. Mongolian herdsmen have a good experience in the improvement of domestic animals properties

New Biotechnology and Government policy An era of new biotechnology started in 1988 when the Government of Mongolia declared the biotechnology as one of the priority areas of S&T. This policy of our Government was developed in several programmes and documents: - Biotechnology sub-programme, National Programme of Science and TechnologyDevelopment Towards the Year 2010.

Last achievements Plant biotechnology (micropropogation of useful, rare and endemic plants, research on transgenic plant) Veterinary (as animal tissue derived drugs Neohystol I, II,III, Neovarilizat, wide spectrum antiparasitics, diagnostics for animal Brucellosis & Ku fiver and other diseases) Animal Husbandry (artificial insemination, embryo transfer and breeding) Medical Biotechnology (Diagnostic kits for major infectious diseases like hepatitis, tuberculosis, HIV as well as non-communicable diseases would be in the market by next year. Also, HBV vaccine will complete its trial )

Biosafety The National Biosafety Framework, to meet the requirements of the Cartagena protocol, was established at the Ministry of Environment. -It is in process of developing a database on biosafety issues, regulatory and administrative system, risk assessment and management programmes. - Biosafety Law

Bioethic committee The National Bioethic Committee was established in 2004 to ensure the review of experiments involving human subjects, teaching bioethics in life sciences in universities and organizing national workshops to promote bioethics in the country.

Master plan the Government elaborates a master plan on intensification of biotechnology development to promote research and development of biotechnology as well as the technology transfer. The master plan aims to ensure an improvement of traditional biotechnology, specially related to processing of dairy, leather, wool and other agricultural products through introduction of new technology, and an intensification of development of different trends of modern biotechnology.

Mongolia in BINASIA The BINASIA, one of biotechnological cooperation in the region through an IT- driven mechanism, is going to link biotech-community providing biotechnology information, promoting international R & D collaboration for technology development and for this purpose, BINASIAnet, a web portal, is being developed in cooperation with the participating member countries.

BINASIA-Mongolia National Workshop Being the member of BINASIA, the BINASIA- Mongolia National Workshop was successfully organized on Nov. 5-6,2004 in Ulaanbaatar. The overall objective of the workshop was to review and exchange information and knowledge regarding the current status and issues of biotechnology among participating bodies with a special focus on national R&D policies and future trends. The workshop was held to deliberate on the IT based BINASIA, to strengthen mongolian participation in BINASIA and international collaboration. The workshop was good opportunity to gather specialists, experts and government officials involved in biotechnology to discuss and share information on biotechnology R&D.

Biotechnology web By BINASIA/KRIBB support, the national biotechnology homepage ( was developed, which unified entire available database to facilitate their application and assessment to the users. The Center for Biotechnology is willing to propose a proposal for the establishment of Biotechnology Information Unit which will provide computer links within different institutions to give easy and free access of information to all the people.

BINASIA in the future Training of researchers, students and other people on methodology, and assistance in some technical facilities, in order to incorporate BINASIA in country level network will be needed. To promote BINASIA activities, to strengthen international collaboration regular meetings, workshops, scientific meetings, training seminars for networking researchers, laboratories, stakeholders and etc, should be organized in member countries regularly.

Future It is important that BINASIA will be not only bioinformatics center for an e-communication within member countries, also in other Asian countries. To share information among different countries, BINASIAnet will be more accessible through networking and linking other programmes such as AKBIN, existing in Asia. Initiation of joint research programmes in commom interested areas of technology transfer will make BINASIA more successful and beneficial for development of Asian countries.

Thank you for your attention!