According to conventional economic theory, countries tend to converge in economic and technological terms towards the leader. More recently, empirical approaches by economic historians (Abramovitz, Landes, Madison, Reinert) have found that while some countries were catching up, others were falling increasingly behind. Among the precise mechanisms that explain why some countries grow and others stagnate, and how technological diffusion takes place, the PLC - ILC model associated with Vernon provides some clues, as do institutional explanations present in innovation systems and related approaches (Freeman, Lundvall, Malerba, Nelson). Biotechnologies are one of the leading sets of technologies in the late 20th century. They encompass applications in agriculture, chemicals, environment and pharmaceuticals. The United States is the leading country in both science and industry, and biotechnologies soon spread to Canada, Japan and Western Europe. Are the main developing countries catching up in biotechnology? A study of eight developing countries in Asia (China, India, Korea, and Singapore) and Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) was conducted, based on the analysis of in situ interviews, patents and scientific publication. The study shows a marked process of catching up in science: each of the above-mentioned developing countries is increasing its share of world publication between 1996 and 2008. However, their share of biotechnology patents is barely increasing. There are also regional differences in terms of sectoral concentration; in Latin America, Argentina and Brazil are eager adopters of agricultural biotechnology and are moving up in the pharmaceutical records. Several Argentinean, Chinese, Indian, and South Korean pharmaceutical companies have been particularly active in the evelopment of biogenerics.