Dubai Healthcare City is talking with a leading university and a giant pharmaceutical group to help bring back the scientific glory that flourished in the region for more than a 100 years.

Dubai is planning to set up a biomedical research institute that will attract young scientists in the region and help in the discovery of drugs for various diseases.

Such an institute is likely to take years to set-up and will require a massive investment.

Professor Paul L. Herrling, head of corporate research at the Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Novartis, told Gulf News initial talks are being held with Harvard University.

He said such an institute would require a solid foundation in many of the basic sciences. "Scientists in this area will require a whole network of people with different kinds of disciplines – physics, mathematics and chemistry – around them to be able to function well."

Herrling is also head of the newly-created institute of tropical diseases in Singapore and also serves on the board of the Genomics Institute in California.

Asked why scientific research has been neglected in this part of the world, Herrling pointed out that the Middle East was the centre of the most advanced sciences for more than a century. "It has a lot to do with priorities," he said, noting that science requires a "certain amount of stability." He also said science requires a free interaction of ideas.

Herrling said Dubai has the scope to become a "hub of excellence" in this region. He said people here have moved away from sciences because of political priorities.

"The returns of science are not immediate," he said, explaining why some countries do not make it a priority. The most important changes in biomedicine are shown in the way diseases are being treated today. "Our knowledge of biology and diseases has gone exponential," he said. "Earlier, we treated the symptoms, not the underlying disease."

He said Novartis labs have brought out compounds for special types of cancer, such as thalassaemia, which are due to genetic blood disorders. The disease is common in the region due to marriages between relatives. Parasitic diseases are common in poorer countries among the younger population.

In the richer countries, it is diabetes and cardio-vascular diseases.

If Dubai can attract great colleges, he said, it can slowly build a base of scientists. He hoped this would also help bring back some of the "brilliant young people" of the region, who are working in the United States.