That was exciting. But the next step was even more important. Leung tried implanting human cancer cells into the mice and testing the drug again. Bingo. The gold attached itself to the amino acids in the cancer cells, and the cancer stopped spreading. Leung filed for a patent.

Now comes the hard part. If Leung intends to push his discovery toward a marketable drug, someone will need to fork out $50 million to $100 million for the battery of human tests that regulators would require. That's risky: Although Leung calls this the most stable compound of its kind that the world has produced, dozens of cancer drugs have worked in mice but not in humans. The easy thing to do would be to sell or license it to a big Western drug company. "We could enjoy our life, go home and watch TV," Leung says. "But I think it is not right."

Instead, Leung is looking for other sources of funding that would give him a better chance of holding onto his drug and intellectual-property rights. He wants to focus his testing on cancers prevalent in Asia, like liver and nasal cancer. "If we succeed," he says with a grin and a lot of determination, "it would not just be a success for the drug." Ultimately, he says, it would be a lesson for the region in how to commercialize a drug and steer its applications.

Leung is not alone. The world is on the cusp of major breakthroughs in biotechnology. From the mapping of human DNA, to major advances in plant and animal genetics, to knowledge about how cells interact and diseases spread, these discoveries are likely to open up a huge industry built on life sciences. It's already starting to happen, and it will explode over the next few years. Investors are already noticing: In the first quarter of this year, according to U.S.-based consultancy Bain & Co., more than $15 billion flowed into publicly listed biotech ventures in the United States.

The implications for Asian economies are huge. At the very least, they will benefit from new agricultural techniques and new medicines. Some will probably manage to copy drugs developed elsewhere, as Asian pharmaceutical companies have long done. But with some foresight, Asian researchers and Asian countries have the chance to be on the development side of the new industries. If they make it, biotech would likely become Asia's Next Big Thing.

Don't underestimate the potential. By even the simplest of measures, the promise is huge. Last year, conventional Asian drug markets--excluding herbal medicines--were a $60 billion business, according to Bain. That's likely to grow rapidly with increasing affluence and life expectancy. But biological developments will also have knock-on effects that will transform everything from trade and commodity markets (as agricultural nations reap bigger harvests of pest-resistant crops) to health care (as humans start living into their 100s).

Right now, the question is who's going to push the process. So far, the region hasn't been at the forefront of genetic research. But slowly, that's starting to change: The global research community is looking seriously at biotech research centres in Japan--the region's biotech leader, though it is still far behind the West. There's increasing research strength in Taiwan, which has set aside millions for developing biotechnology capabilities. Major agrobiology research is being done in China and India. And India has produced some of the region's leading drug successes: Indian pharmaceutical company Dr. Reddy, whose chairman, K. Anji Reddy, is a diabetic, created one of the world's leading drugs for adult-onset diabetes.

"Dr. Reddy has done a lot of research into the creation of new molecules," says Thorkia Christensen, general manager of Novo Nordisk, the Danish firm that's distributing the drug. "It's an ideal partnership--team up with someone who has an idea for development, and take our ability to run clinical development."

Perhaps the most determined Asian country is Singapore. With characteristic single-mindedness, the city-state has taken several steps to pursue biotech research and promote science. It has put more biology into its school curricula, endowed more scientific scholarships, showered tax breaks on pharmaceutical firms, set up public investment funds that invest in biotech, and brought in medical institutions like the pre-eminent U.S. research centre, Johns Hopkins. Most recently, on June 2 the Singapore government signed a $40 million deal with Chiron, one of the biggest U.S. biotech firms, to set up a research and drug-discovery venture. Research will focus on infectious diseases and terminal illnesses prevalent in Asia.

Even with these developments, Philip Yeo, Singapore's top economic planner, figures it will still be another five years before his country reaches the top of the class. "The problem is we need scientists," says Yeo, chairman of the Economic Development Board. "We've been training engineers; we haven't been training scientists." Yeo's right--it isn't going to happen overnight. Biotech is a much tougher and riskier game than the world's last Big Thing, the Internet. Even with the hi-tech bubble deflating, an Internet entrepreneur can get up and running in a couple of months on a few million dollars. Drug development, by contrast, is measured in years, and tens or hundreds of millions. Where does the money come from? The U.S. National Institute of Health funds $17 billion in research each year, and the 10 largest pharmaceutical firms--all Western--fork out another $15 billion or so globally, with the bulk distributed in the U.S. and Europe. "That's not going to be duplicated in very many places," says Howard Califano, chief executive of Johns Hopkins' year-old Singapore operations. "Can Asia as a whole push that much funds for basic research? I doubt it."

What Asia can do instead of focusing on pure science research is focus on developments that have a clear commercial potential. Researchers at Johns Hopkins' lab in Singapore for instance, are trying to identify the active compounds in Chinese herbal medicines. If they succeed, the next step would be to isolate and genetically produce them. Another project: Genetic treatments for dengue fever. Currently, dengue vaccines are made from a weak variant of the dengue bug that stimulates the immune system; now, researchers in Singapore hope to come up with genetic treatments that make the human body attack the disease directly.

For now, big Western drug companies will likely drive the commercialization of whichever drug shows promise in initial tests. The economics of development dictate the approach: An entrepreneur like Leung has one project--if it fails, that's years of work and nothing to show for it. A big pharmaceutical company pools risks--if it gets 30 projects in the pipeline, only three have to make it for the company to get rich. Meanwhile, drug companies' patents on processes, products and even some genes, present legal roadblocks for new players.

But the barriers of intellectual property are about to become lower as the science of disease prevention is set to change completely. Two consortiums in the U.S. have effectively mapped out 90% of the structure of human DNA. Now, as scientists pore through their knowledge about those genes, they're likely to turn to functional questions such as which genetic mutations cause cancers to spread or human immune systems to attack their own cells.

Already, says Chris Tan, head of Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, research is turning from the genetic maps, or sequences, to trying to divine what those genes do. "Sequencing is boring," declares Tan. The key, he figures, is working out which sequences do what: "The secret of cancer research is not to find a cure. The secret to finding a cure for cancer is understanding what went wrong with the regulation of the cell."

That's why Tan's institute is studying how cells send signals to each other. Scientists know that it's a process of sending proteins down a line from one cell to another, and that it occurs everywhere from the immune system to the brain. But painstakingly following every signal could lead to an understanding of what causes cancer or diabetes. "If I was to say that a cure is around the corner, I would be lying to you," Tan says. "But now we have the tools to study these diseases in a rational manner." The work is so promising that the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoWellcome is funding some of the institute's biotech research.

Similar research is being done at Johns Hopkins. There, scientists are trying to identify which gene sequences cause a person to develop liver cancer. This points to a key role for Asia, Califano says--taking research from elsewhere and applying it to diseases prevalent in Asia. Given the rarity of liver cancer in the U.S., he says, the work being done in Singapore probably wouldn't have happened at Johns Hopkins' headquarters in Baltimore.

And liver cancer isn't the only such disease. Consider Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma--nasal cancer. It starts as a virus, called Epstein-Barr, that often causes cancerous cells to form in Asians, especially Chinese. (When Caucasians are struck by the same virus, they merely get sick for a few days.) In Singapore, Johns Hopkins researchers are trying to find a way to tell the immune system to attack the cancerous cells. Califano says one compound has worked in some initial animal tests. Again, he says, the work probably wouldn't have been a priority in the U.S.

Another Asia-specific research activity that several countries have tapped is clinical testing. The U.S. Federal Drug Authority is the pre-eminent drug-approval body in the world, and most of the world's regulatory bodies still largely follow the FDA's lead in approving new treatments. But there's a lot of value in running tests on different ethnic populations, because there are differences. In multi-ethnic Singapore, for instance, 7% of ethnic Chinese have diabetes, in ethnic Malays the incidence rate is 11% and in Indians it's a remarkably high 13%. Already, pharmaceutical giants like Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough, SmithKline Beecham, Novo Nordisk, Pharmacia & Upjohn and GlaxoWellcome are conducting human clinical tests in Singapore; they also are managing tests in other Asian countries.

Agro-biology could be another huge area for Asia to tap. Yes, there's plenty of objection to genetically modified foods, most of it emerging from Europe. But given that work on genetically modified crops continues to improve yields and produce pest-resistant strands of rice and other crops, this will likely be a big area, particularly for agricultural countries like China and India.

One reason: Although there's some resistance to genetic foods in affluent countries like Japan, there are few such qualms in developing nations. Ask Venkatesan Sundaresan, head of Singapore's Institute of Molecular Agrobiology. Just back from a work trip to China, he marvels over a sign on the highway from Beijing to the airport, which reads: Experimental Center for Testing of Genetically Modified Organisms. He says he couldn't imagine putting up such a sign in Europe. "It would be an invitation for protesters."

In Singapore, Sundaresan's lab is engaged in a host of projects. One involves trying to find a way to graft genes from hearty, disease-resistant forms of inedible wild rice onto more delicate, edible strains of rice. Strolling through a greenhouse filled with a range of healthy and not-so-healthy experimental plants, he speaks of collaborative efforts with Chinese researchers breeding cotton, rice and rapeseed. Pest-resistant crops, he says, reduce pesticide use by around 80%.

Upstairs, meanwhile, Hungarian researcher Laszlo Orban is trying to create fish that produce only male offspring. That would help fisheries, because most male fish grow larger than females. If you want caviar, you want to breed females; but if you want meat, you want males.

There's even an industry developing in providing for the needs of genetic researchers like Orban. Genset, a French genetics firm, last year set up a facility in Singapore that takes requests from researchers for particular DNA compounds. Requests for genetic sequences arrive by e-mail, go directly to desktop-copier-sized sequencing machines, and produce little tubes of fluid that are shipped back to the researchers within 24 hours. In the biotech era, says Genset Singapore's managing director, Damien Waché, the old-fashioned benefits of efficient transport help.

But the big pay-off will come if the region's scientific skills continue to improve and scientists like Leung make it. Or, even better, if scientists who have emigrated to the West return armed with knowledge to boost research in the region. Ask Leung about his researchers, and he gushes about the mainland Chinese who make up much of his lab. "The commitment to the science is so high." The clinical tests on his cancer drug await. Stay tuned.