Nanfang Daily (reporter Zhang Wei): "In the new wave of IT+BT development, Shenzhen's precision medicine has not only life science as its engine but also big data and IT as engines, combined with capital as the 'fuel'. Once it takes off, it will be the most powerful." On June 13, the first parallel forum of the 4th Shenzhen International Low Carbon City Forum — the "China-US Precision Medicine Industry and Policy Forum" — was held, drawing leading figures in precision medicine from China and the United States, including in gene sequencing and big data processing. On the same day, BGI Research and the School of Economics and Management of Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen jointly issued an industry initiative for a Precision Medicine Industry and Policy Alliance and announced plans to undertake economic research on the life sciences.
Precision medicine industry reaches RMB 400 billion in scale
Precision medicine is an emerging approach to disease prevention and management that takes individual differences in genes, environment, and lifestyle into account. Tang Jie, former Vice Mayor of Shenzhen, said that biotechnology and genetics have developed rapidly over the past 20 years; gene and cell sciences are triggering a new round of technological revolution, of which precision medicine is an important component. Precision medicine relies more heavily on digital analysis, expanding into industries such as IT and cell analysis. "The biotech industry in the United States is growing at six times the rate of overall economic growth, while in Shenzhen it is growing only slightly faster than the economy. From this we can see that China's biotech industry — including life sciences — has enormous potential, but is still significantly constrained."
Cai Yu, Deputy Director of the Shenzhen Development and Reform Commission, said that in 2015, on top of strategic emerging industries, Shenzhen put forward "future industries", including life and health, the marine economy, and aerospace. Among them, the precision medicine industry currently has a scale of 400 billion yuan and has become a new economic growth point.
Liao Shuhua, Deputy Secretary of the Shenzhen Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission, said that precision medicine has made notable progress in Shenzhen, with multiple hospitals such as Shenzhen Second People's Hospital establishing related research institutes and medical centers, and rare diseases from around the world being successfully treated in Shenzhen. "Shenzhen's plan to build itself into a 'health-strong city' calls for, by 2018, the establishment of 10 translational medicine, 10 biomedicine innovation platforms, 5 precision medicine, 5 traditional Chinese medicine, 5 'Internet plus medicine', and 5 public health innovation platforms; and by 2020, the establishment of 10 national- and provincial-level key laboratories, engineering laboratories, and clinical experimental institutions, and the building of the Precision Medicine Research Institute of the Shenzhen Academy of Sciences, focusing on the prevention of malignant tumors, chronic diseases, birth defects, and rare diseases." Liao Shuhua said that by 2025, the city hopes to raise the average life expectancy of Shenzhen residents from the current 78 or 79 years to 82 years.
Big data analytics may become a development opportunity
Liao Shuhua believes that Shenzhen's precision medicine still has issues such as insufficient innovation capacity, lack of unified quality standards, and the need to strengthen industry self-discipline. Hu Xiang, Chairman of Shenzhen Beike Biotechnology Co., Ltd., said that an important lesson from his 11 years in Shenzhen is: "Precision medicine is not only an innovation in science and an innovation in technology — what matters most is the existence of an enabling industry environment."
"The technology has matured and the science has developed, but if the corresponding policy and regulatory environment, and even people's mindsets, do not keep up, the industry will struggle to develop," Hu Xiang said. Industrial policy and environment are the foundation of industry development. "Beginning this year, once the infrastructure is in place, large-scale cell storage can be carried out, and at the same time everyone's health data and records can be obtained. This will transform us from a traditional biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical enterprise into a health management and future-precision-medicine enterprise based on big data and the Internet model. This changes the growth curve of biopharmaceutical companies and reflects Shenzhen's overall innovation environment."
"We all know that prevention is more important than treatment, but why isn't it achieved? Because we lack the means to collect data and lack precise analytics on big data and medical knowledge bases." Hu Xiang believes that, in precision medicine, Shenzhen may become the next major source of activity. "I think there are opportunities here. Shenzhen has long had a supercomputing center, gene sequencing, and a personalized treatment network, plus the Shenzhen government's strong innovation capacity. I have full confidence in Shenzhen."
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What has Shenzhen done to develop strategic emerging industries?
Cai Yu, Deputy Director of the Shenzhen Development and Reform Commission, pointed out that since Shenzhen took the lead in identifying biotech, the Internet, new energy, new materials, cultural creativity, next-generation information technology, and energy conservation and environmental protection as strategic emerging industries, the scale of these industries reached 2.3 trillion yuan in 2015, with value-added output exceeding 700 billion yuan, accounting for 17.4% of GDP and contributing 60% to economic development.
So what has the city of innovation done to develop strategic emerging industries? Cai Yu offered four lessons: first, plan and lay out early to create high ground for emerging industries; second, address weak links in innovation by building innovation carriers; third, strengthen fiscal support and increase R&D investment; and fourth, build open networks and strengthen resource allocation.
Shenzhen's fiscal investment in R&D has been almost unstinting. Last year's R&D-to-GDP ratio reached the same level as that of Israel and South Korea, doubling from five years earlier.
To address the weakness that "resources of higher-education institutions and research bodies are not particularly abundant", Shenzhen has taken extraordinary measures to develop innovation carriers, including national, provincial, and municipal engineering laboratories and engineering centers, as well as enterprise technology research centers. It has built new research institutes — including the Intelligent Robotics Research Institute, the Genomics and Immunology Research Institute, and the Big Data Research Institute — and intensively introduced high-quality educational resources, including research universities and specialized institutes such as the Southern University of Science and Technology, to fill the gaps.
Today, drawing on strategic emerging industries, Shenzhen is also entering a new phase of integrating with the global economy and gathering innovation talent and strengthening resource allocation worldwide. It has participated in the international neutrino experiment cooperation project, the EU's Horizon 2020 R&D framework, and the International Genome Project. With Silicon Valley and Israel, Shenzhen has built an "innovation and entrepreneurship express", and supports Huawei and ZTE in deploying 67 R&D centers around the world. At the same time, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Innovation Circle has been advanced, with six Hong Kong universities establishing industry-university-research bases in Shenzhen.
But Cai Yu particularly emphasized that the very core of the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements is the deep integration of technology and finance. Shenzhen has 46,000 investment institutions with registered capital exceeding 2.7 trillion yuan. "Currently, Shenzhen has set up a 30 billion yuan venture capital guidance fund and, together with the National Emerging Industries Venture Capital Guidance Fund, has established 12 emerging industry funds. In addition to high-tech enterprises themselves, Shenzhen's science and technology services industry has reached a scale of more than 100 billion yuan, which has also fostered close industry-university-research cooperation. In areas including mobile Internet, robotics, and cloud computing, 45 industry-university-research alliances and 7 patent alliances have been established."
Source: Nanfang Daily. Original title: "Where do Shenzhen's advantages in developing precision medicine lie?"
