Much Ado about Something: Cuban Biotech

Cuban advances in biotech have made headlines, particularly since the US-Cuba rapprochement and signing of the historic memorandum of understanding between the US Department of Health and Human Services and Cuba's Ministry of Public Health in June. Some 34 Cuban institutions with 22,000 employees are the backbone of a biotech industry that dates to the early 1980s, obtaining novel products that have sparked interest among potential global partners. While a number of these Cuban products are registered in various countries, their testing in the USA remains ensnared in the red tape of embargo laws that tend to make investors skittish and thus delay, if not curtail, joint research and clinical trial applications to the FDA.