The Shanghai government will invest more than 70 million yuan (US$8.4 million) annually over at least the next two years to support the development of the State-Shanghai Bio-Pharmaceutical Industrial Base in the city's Pudong New Area, city officials said over the weekend.

The government hopes the bio-pharmaceutical industrial base, established in 1996 at Shanghai Zhangjiang High-tech Park, will become a "drug valley" and produce more than 50 billion yuan worth of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals annually by 2007.

"Shanghai will increase investment in the industrial base to make it one of the leading bio-pharmaceutical research centers in the Asia-Pacific region, and a world-level manufacturing center for bio-pharmaceutical products," Mayor Han Zheng said at a conference on Saturday.

"In 2007, companies in the Pudong base will account for 12 percent of the country's total, and output of new drugs should account for more than 40 percent of China's total," the mayor said.

Last year, more than 280 pharmaceutical companies in the city generated 22.2 billion yuan in sales, up 18 percent from a year ago. Their output accounted for 9 percent of the country's total. This year, Shanghai plans to invest 70.2 million yuan in various research projects conducted at the base.

Projects include a traditional Chinese medicine innovation park, which is expected to open early next year, and a specialized bio-pharmaceutical incubator.

In addition, the city has invested 80 million yuan to support the research and development of new drugs and technologies, as well as supporting small bio-pharm companies.

The base is busy inviting world level bio-pharm companies to set up research and development centers and move manufacturing facilities there to upgrade the local industry.

Last year, US-based Lily Pharmaceutical Co, South Korea's SK Pharmaceutical and Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Pharmaceutical set up research centers in the Pudong base.

Sk pharmaceutical and Hutchison Whampoa will emphasize research on the modernization of traditional Chinese medicines.

To date, the base is home to four of the world's top 20 drugmakers - Sankyo Pharmaceutical, Hoffmann-La Roche Inc, GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim - which have invested a combined US$169.6 million in the city.

During the first half of this year, companies located at the bio-pharm base generated 1.65 billion yuan in sales, up 45 percent from a year earlier.

(Shanghai Daily September 15, 2003)