Biotech summit to be held Sept. 11-12 in Shenzhen

The 2019 Shenzhen International Biotech Summit will be held at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center on Sept. 11 and 12, according to an announcement at a press conference Friday.

This year’s summit will feature two keynote speeches, two high-end dialogues and five professional forums covering topics in the biotech industry, such as innovative drugs, high-end biomedical engineering and big data in health care.

The two high-end dialogues will explore the latest trends of biomedicine in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and probe innovation in the development of new drugs and the traditional Chinese medicine industry.

Government officials, academicians, biotech entrepreneurs and investors from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland will attend the summit to engage in academic exchanges, policy analysis and industrial cooperation.

“The added value of the biomedical industry in Shenzhen reached 29.85 billion yuan (US$4.2 billion) last year, with a year-on-year growth of 22.3 percent and ranking first among the seven strategic emerging industries,” said Wu You, deputy secretary-general of the city government.

According to Wu, Shenzhen has more than 300 innovation platforms, including 20 at the State level, in the field of biomedicine. The city attaches great importance to the development of the biomedical industry, as opportunities are being produced by a new round of technology industry reform.

The summit will also release a ranking of the top 20 biotech enterprises in Shenzhen. Meanwhile, the China Center for Information Industry Development and Shenzhen Securities Information Co. Ltd. will jointly launch thematic indexes on medicine and health to further guide market resources to high-quality enterprises.

Shenzhen has hosted the biotech summit for five years. The summit aims to provide a high-level and professional platform in China for exchanges in the biomedical field.