HAVANA -- When Franklin Sotolongo injected himself with the vial of experimental liquid that day in 1985, it was one of the most emotional moments of his life.

Sotolongo was leading a small team of Cuban scientists struggling to save their nation from an epidemic of group-B meningitis. Hundreds of children were dying, and there was neither a cure nor a vaccine -- not only on their island, but anywhere.

They studied the research of scientists in Europe and the United States, and, after years of testing in monkeys and mice, Sotolongo and his team had what they thought was a breakthrough. ``We tried it on ourselves first,'' he says. ``We were sure there was nothing to worry about, but we felt the first risks should be ours.''
Thirteen years later, group-B meningitis has been virtually wiped out. Cuba and Sotolongo's government institute have the patent on a group-B meningococcal vaccine so effective that international pharmaceutical giant SmithKline Beecham is appealing to Washington to waive its trade embargo of Cuba to permit its own trials of the vaccine.

But the vaccine is just one of many unheralded breakthroughs in Cuba's little-known yet highly advanced biotechnology industry -- one that has, with its infusion of foreign exchange, helped the country weather the collapse of its Soviet benefactor.

Fast-growing fish

Unencumbered by competing interests in a one-party state that views biotech as a key to its medical and economic survival, Cuban scientists have developed an array of new vaccines and drugs that are at the leading edge of biotech research.

One team is hard at work in the first phase of human clinical trials of a potential AIDS vaccine that scientists hope will be ready for commercial use in two years. Another is perfecting what would be the world's first effective vaccine against cholera -- a disease that doesn't even exist in Cuba. Other scientists have used human placenta to develop a cream that effectively reverses the effects of certain skin diseases. And still another has successfully cloned a new species of fish that grows twice as fast as the natural variety.

That ``transgenetic'' fish, whose growth genes have been modified by Cuban scientists will be Cuba's centerpiece at a five-day international conference it is sponsoring in Havana in November.

But Cuba's multimillion-dollar biotechnology industry is not just for show or its own medical needs. Already, the Cuban government successfully has marketed its group-B meningococcal vaccine in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, where sales have helped Cuba repay its debts to those countries.

$290 million in sales

Heber Biotech S.A., a semi-private company created by the Cuban government in 1991 to market its high-tech pharmaceuticals, is now selling products in 34 countries. Among them: an indigenously developed interferon, a hepatitis B vaccine and an advanced streptokinase drug that destroys coronary clots.

With annual sales as high as $290 million a year, Heber, Sotolongo's Finlay Institute and other centers in Cuba's biotech industry now rank behind only tourism, nickel production and tobacco as the country's largest export earner. And it is poised for even bigger growth in the years ahead.

The Finlay Institute's high-tech Plant No. 3 is the cornerstone of that expansion effort. Packed with more than $100 million in state-of-the-art imported equipment, the factory has the capacity to produce 100 million doses of vaccines every year -- more than double what it has marketed in the past. And the institute has prepared slick brochures and marketing campaigns to advertise its potential worldwide.

The Biotechnology Havana '98 Transgenesis conference scheduled to open Nov. 16 is subtitled ``From the Laboratory to the Market,'' and it will include commercial endeavors once unthinkable in this Communist state; exhibit space already is renting for $50 per square foot.

Medicines scarce

And Heber Biotech, marketing itself under the slogan ``Approaching Horizons,'' now has offices or direct business relations in more than 50 countries, and it boasts that its sales increased more than six-fold between 1992 and '96.

Through most of its 30-year history, Cuba's biotechnology research industry focused almost entirely on preventing and curing diseases at home -- an island nation where medicines were scarce, largely because of the United States' punishing trade embargo.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, Cuba lost billions of dollars that kept its socialist economy afloat. The government was forced to inventory its state industries for potential exports to raise the money it needed to continue subsidizing food and providing free education and health care. Its biotechnology industry emerged near the top of the list.

In recent years, the government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in biotech facilities and research. That has created something of a technology gap here: scientists using advanced genetic techniques to clone fish in a land where the U.S. embargo has made antibiotics scarce on hospital shelves and smoke-belching, '50s-vintage Chevys and Buicks commonplace on the streets.

Competitive markets

Dr. Mario Pablo Estrada, who heads the fish-transgenesis project, explains the phenomenon with simple mathematics: ``With $7 million, we couldn't even begin to produce our own basic medicines,'' which he said are far more costly to mass-produce than highly specialized ``niche'' products such as vaccines.

``But with a $7 million investment here at the genetic research center,'' he said, ``we can make $30 million in sales, and we can use that to buy a lot of basic medicines.''

Estrada conceded that the European and U.S. biotechnology markets are highly competitive and that Cuba will need ``very strong joint-venture partners'' such as SmithKline to penetrate them.

U.S. market analysts, who confirmed that Cuba does have state-of-the-art research and production capability, agreed that Cuba's entry into the global biotechnology market will be an uphill battle.

Still, U.S.-Cuba trade experts, backed by U.S. scientists familiar with Cuba's work, say the key to Cuba's success so far in biotechnology has not been the financial incentive. They credit the talent of Cuba's mostly young scientists -- along with the ability of a one-party state to minimize internal competition and bureaucracy -- as the chief reason for the medical breakthroughs.

The U.S. scientists said that the Cubans' safety and research standards equal or even exceed those of the U.S. Federal Drug Administration and the European Union.