(Yicai Global) Sept. 27 -- The first International Biopharma Industry Week Shanghai will be held from Oct. 11 to 14. Thousands of chief executives from Chinese and foreign firms are set to join hundreds of top scientists and scores of leading investors at the inaugural event, according to the organizers.

Hosted by the Shanghai Center of Biomedicine Development, E Fund Asset Management, Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group and Zhangjiang Group, the IBIWS will hold 20 forums, Wu Jincheng, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, told a press briefing yesterday.

Set to deliver keynote speeches at the opening ceremony are Michael Levitt, 2013 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry; Zhang Boli, a medical expert who received the Chinese national accolade of People’s Hero due to his endeavors in the fight against Covid-19; Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca; and Wang Xiaodong, co-founder of Chinese biotech startup BeiGene.

They will offer their suggestions to Shanghai on building a world-class biomedicine industrial cluster, Wu said. 

The event, to be held regularly in the future, will focus on the integration of industry and capital, with E Fund Asset Management, one of the largest public fund companies in China, hosting the 2021 Future Healthcare Industry Summit.

J.P. Morgan Chase will hold its first annual meeting of the healthcare industry in China and HighLight Capital, a well-known Chinese investor in the healthcare sector, will organize a forum on a corresponding theme.

During the weeklong event, Shanghai will issue a series of authoritative reports and research results, including the Zhangjiang Biomedical Innovation Index, the Biomedical Rising Stars list and the report on the ecology of Shanghai’s biomedical sector. This is aimed at setting industry benchmarks and models and discovering companies with potential, the organizers said.

The biomedicine sector, one of Shanghai’s leading industries, exceeded CNY600 billion (USD93 billion) in 2020. Shanghai plans to form a world-class biomedicine industrial cluster in the next five years, boosting the industry’s value to CNY1.2 trillion (USD185.7 billion) by 2025, according to Wu.

Editor: Peter Thomas