BOGOTA, Colombia – The biotech sector is benefiting from better relations between the U.S. and Cuba, a country that while poor has a history of drug research and development.

In fact, more cooperation in biotech could benefit both Cuba and the U.S., Carlos Alberto Montaner, an exiled Cuban journalist and long-term analyst, said of the relationship between the two countries.

"Collaboration in this area is always convenient," Montaner told BioWorld Today. "Medicines and food have been exempt from the regulations of the embargo for many years. Cuba has good professionals, but is far behind for lack of free access to the internet and the almost total absence of advanced equipment."

The U.S., however, may be the one that has some catching up to do. Countries like China and Argentina have already secured biotech development and distribution deals with Cuban institutions. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 20, 2014, Dec. 24, 2014, and April. 22, 2015.)

Still, the loosening of tensions between the two countries is already showing signs of productivity. In April, during a trade mission to Cuba from New York, Buffalo's Roswell Park Cancer Institute secured a deal to jointly develop a lung cancer vaccine with Cuban researchers. The agreement, signed by Roswell Park's president, Candace Johnson, and the general manager of the Cuban Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM in Spanish), Einard Blanco, was groundbreaking. Just a few months ago, such an agreement between the U.S. and Cuba, the target of a decades-old embargo, would have been unlikely.

The two institutions have had a relationship since 2011, with Roswell Park working with CIM through academic and preclinical research exchanges. But it wasn't until after President Barack Obama started moving toward easing the embargo that an agreement could be formally reached.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo led the recent trade delegation to Cuba, and the deal between Roswell Park and CIM was finalized, going well beyond academic cooperation. Cuomo has been a supporter of normalized relations with Cuba, saying that "mutual business relationships that assist Cuba and also work for the companies is a big, big part of moving forward."

"The agreement we reached during Gov. Cuomo's trade mission holds tremendous promise," said Roswell Park's Johnson.

Under the agrrement, Roswell Park will put CIM's vaccine, which is already in use in Cuba, through early phase clinical trials. With an agreement in place, Roswell Park can move forward on an application to the FDA.

The vaccine, Cimavax-EGF, launched in 2011 after 15 years of research, is already registered in Cuba and Peru, while other countries in Latin America such as Colombia, Argentina and Brazil are moving forward with the registration process.

"This vaccine was developed by prestigious scientists from the Center of Molecular Immunology and we are very excited to take this to the United States to treat patients," Johnson told reporters during a press conference at Havana's airport at the end of the recent trade mission.

The vaccine has already shown promise in controlling lung cancer and it has "value in both preventing and treating lung cancer and possibly other cancers," according to Roswell Park.

BARRIERS DISAPPEARING?

Relationships with Cuba are worth pursuing, said Montaner, though he warned of contradictory moods inside the Cuban government that could derail such agreements.

"The Cuba from the Castros remains paranoid about this kind of collaboration. It will be very difficult for the country to be integrated into a truly productive research," said Montaner. "I remember the case of an excellent researcher who was punished and [sidelined] . . . for having scientific contacts with 'the enemy.'"

Montaner was referring to Manuel Limonta, one of Cuba's top biotech research scientist who was removed from his post in December 1998. He had been in charge of promoting Cuba's biotech sector. "Castro had needed someone like him to make biotechnology work in the first place," wrote S.M. Reid-Henry in his book The Cuban Cure: Reason and Resistance in Global Science.

Now, almost two decades later, Cuba's biotech sector may find the political climate more welcoming of such deals and global biotech companies may be more likely to look at the Cuban market and Cuban researchers.

During the same trade mission, New York medtech company Infor Global Solutions secured a pair of deals to distribute its health care solutions software in Cuba and other countries in Latin America through Cuban distributors.

And last year, Hartmut Ehrlich, CEO of France's Abivax SA, told BioWorld Today that the embargo was proving to be a problem: "I think that, hopefully, these barriers will be disappearing . . . and this will open up very new opportunities for companies that are already engaged with Cuba." (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 24, 2014.)

Abivax later secured a deal with the Finlay Institute to distribute Vax-Tyvi, Va-Mengoc-Bc and Vax-Spiral in Asia and Latin America. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 2, 2014.)

And patients could benefit from U.S.-Cuba ties.

"The lung cancer vaccine developed by the Center for Molecular Immunology team represents a creative, unique approach to treating and perhaps preventing cancer, and we are enormously proud that Roswell Park expects to be the first U.S. institution to be able to offer it to select patients," said Johnson.