An employee works on a pharmaceutical production line in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. [LIANG ZIDONG/FOR CHINA DAILY]
Attracted by the innovation ecosystem and supportive industrial policies, a biopharmaceutical scientist from the United States came to Shijiazhuang, capital of North China's Hebei province, to launch a joint venture.
Gai Dahai, chairman of Shijiazhuang NeoGen Biotechnology Co, settled down in the city's Central Innovation Zone — Shijiazhuang International Biomedical Industry Park — in March.
NeoGen's main undertaking is developing an immunotherapy drug for cervical cancer treatment.
"When starting a business here, we just need to focus on research, without worrying about much else," Gai was quoted as saying by Hebei Daily.
"For example, the shared equipment in the park has saved us a lot of fixed asset investment, helping us to enter the field and concentrate limited resources on project advancement," he said.
Shijiazhuang has long been a proven pharmaceutical powerhouse in the country.
Last year, the total operating income of the city's biopharmaceutical sector reached 107.86 billion yuan ($15.02 billion), exceeding the 100 billion yuan mark for the first time, with a year-on-year growth of 10.6 percent, according to the local government.
To promote the industry's high-quality development, the city launched the Central Innovation Zone in July last year to help meet the needs of biopharmaceutical firms while reducing their cost of innovation.
The main function of the zone is to optimize and integrate various scientific and technological resources and build a full-chain innovation system from creative ideas, technological research and development, laboratory work, testing, pilot scale-ups, incubation and monetization, said Zhang Licai, deputy director of the city's biomedical industry park management committee.
"We must continue to build the low-cost park with strong support capabilities so as to attract and incubate more innovative biomedical enterprises," Zhang said.
The high-quality development of the biomedical industry in Shijiazhuang is a microcosm of the entire Hebei province, which is encouraging pharmaceutical companies to research and produce more "Chinese medicines "compatible with the genetic and constitutional features of the Chinese people.
To promote the high-quality development of the biopharmaceutical industry across the entire province, Hebei has established a dedicated team, with Ni Yuefeng, secretary of the Hebei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Wang Zhengpu, governor of Hebei, serving as the group's leaders.
Under the group's leadership, the province has formulated a"1+3" policy system to inject strong impetus into the high-quality development of the biopharmaceutical sector, including specific measures to support the development of traditional Chinese medicines.
In addition to Shijiazhuang, Cangzhou in Hebei has a biomedical industry park featuring the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in the sector, with dozens of companies having transferred operations from Beijing and Tianjin.
Qinhuangdao, another city in Hebei, is home to the Beidaihe Life Health Industry Innovation Demonstration Zone — the only such national-level zone in North China.
At present, Qinhuangdao is accelerating its cultivation and expansion of its life health industry cluster, encompassing medicine, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, wellness and tourism.
It has already attracted a large number of companies in biomanufacturing, medical care, pharmaceutical equipment and health preservation to gather in the area.
