The area highlights the Bio-Pharmaceutical International Innovation Park, and develops the infrastructure and industry incubation platforms that are up to international standards. With the start of the park’s construction, the bio-industry of Binhai New Area is embracing an era of rapid development.

There is still a lot to be desired for China’s bio-industry, compared to that of developed countries. The local bio-enterprises are more often of smaller scales and are in a comparatively stronger need to develop their capacity for independent innovation. In terms of the proportion of the R&D input in the sales revenue in this industry, China only achieves one-tenth of that in developed countries.

In 2006, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Health, the State Food and Drug Administration and Tianjin Municipal Government decided to establish Bio-Pharmaceutical International Innovation Park in joint effort, making it an important bio-technological and pharmaceutical R&D trans formation base to further drive the development and breakthrough in these two industries in China. State-level Bio-Pharmaceutical International Innovation Park has a planned area of six square kilometers, including R&D Zone, Incubation Zone and Manufacturing and Commercial Zone. The core of R&D Zone is Tianjin International Bio-Pharmaceutical Joint Research Institute, which is also the symbol of the international innovation park.

Since 2006, the construction work on Tianjin International Bio-Pharmaceutical Joint Research Institute has been in full swing. The first-stage construction of the Joint Research Institute has been completed in principle. Key facilities, such as the central laboratory and the main building, have been finished and put into usage. In three to five years, the Joint Research Institute will build up a public technology service platform with international perspective, meeting technology requirements for biomedical research and development. The Joint Research Institute will attract high-end R&D team and innovation-oriented projects, which will enable the Bio-pharmaceutical International Innovation Park become a symbolic land of bio-pharmacy industry both at home and abroad.

Since 2009, there have been more than 10 bio-pharmaceutical companies registered in the Park and a bunch of project hammered out. Quite some world-renowned bio-pharmaceutical enterprises, investors and embassies came to evaluate the investment possibility. The Park witnessed 17 projects listed as national key programs for new drug innovation, winning national funding of 300 million yuan. The project of “innovatory drug research and development comprehensive platform” was approved in October of 2008, which symbolizes that Tianjin and its Binhai New Area has been embodied as a key component of national drug development system.

The Joint Research Institute promotes cooperation on a world-wide scale. A Clinical Test Platform center has gone into operation on May 8. The Sino-Italian Traditional Chinese Medicine Joint Laboratory with Italian National Institute of Health has been set up, along with a joint R&D center with Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. World renowned strategic investor Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc is setting up a bio-pharmaceutical incubator, with the first-phrase construction kicking off.

The Innovation Park plans to bring in 200 high-end innovation-oriented talents from home and abroad in five years to bolster 100 major projects that push forward the transformation of pharmaceutical research and development. A total of 100 bio-pharmaceutical enterprises and R&D institutes are expected to come in, generating an industry output of 50 billion yuan and making the Binhai New Area the largest and leading pharmaceutical R&D hub with China’s own intellectual property rights.