SciDev.Net notes the founding of the Federation of Asian Biotech Associations, an organization intended to promote collaboration between industry and academia across a wide swath of Asia and into the Pacific. The organization is notable for two reasons, both relating to membership. The first is that there are no member countries traditionally thought of as being in the "highly developed" world; no Japan, no Australia, not even South Korea. There's a strong South-South element here.

The second... well, let me give you the list of members, and you'll quickly see the second interesting membership element: FABA's founding members are India, Iran, Israel, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Iran, Saudi Arabia... and Israel? Indeed. The road to peace and cooperation in the Middle East may lie through the labs of bioscience.