TEHRAN -- A senior official says Iran is standing among the first 12 countries of the world with the highest number of scientific articles in the field of biotechnology.
“We rank 12th in the world in producing scientific articles in the field of biotechnology,” Muhammad Hussein Mote’allehi Ardakani, the secretary of the Biotechnology Development Department of the Iranian Vice-Presidency for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy, told ANA.
In the field of science production and product production, he said, Iran ranks first in the West Asia region
“The goal that we had in the past in terms of GDP was to reach 3% of the world market but our share of the world market is less than one percent and the share of biotechnology products in the country’s GDP is less than half a percent,” he said.
He said 60% of Iran’s pharmaceutical exports are biotechnological products which indicates the high capacity and competitiveness of biotechnology products. 
Also, in the field of virus therapy for cancer as an emerging treatment, various research teams were activated. 
“In the future, we will see these two types of treatment technologies in Iran,” Mote’allehi Ardakani underlined.
Last October, the head of Iran’s biotechnology association said the country’s researchers succeeded in producing different types of biotechnology medicine and exporting them to foreign states.
“Although biotechnology is younger than the pharmaceutical industry, today we see that the largest part of Iran’s medical exports is biotechnology-based drugs produced by knowledge-based companies,” Sirous Zeynali said then.