PHARMACEUTICAL COOPERATION BETWEEN SEATTLE AND TASHKENT: BUILDING ON A HALF-CENTURY SISTER-CITY PARTNERSHIP

This article examines the prospects for pharmaceutical and life-sciences cooperation between Seattle, United States, and Tashkent, Uzbekistan, viewed against the background of the two cities' longstanding sister-city relationship established in 1973. The study reviews the history of the Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association, including past exchanges between physicians and health professionals and the University of Washington-Tashkent State University partnership, and analyzes Seattle's standing as one of the leading biotechnology and life-sciences clusters in the United States, anchored by the University of Washington School of Pharmacy, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's global health programs. It further examines the development of Tashkent's own pharmaceutical infrastructure, including the Tashkent Pharmaceutical Institute and the Tashkent Pharma Park cluster. The findings suggest that the existing citizen-diplomacy framework between the two cities, combined with Seattle's global-health orientation and Tashkent's expanding pharmaceutical production base, provides an unusually strong and underused foundation for translating a decades-old civic friendship into concrete pharmaceutical, academic and public-health cooperation.