A medical worker takes a swab sample from a resident for nucleic acid test at a COVID-19 testing site in East China's Shanghai, July 9, 2022.

 
Shanghai's first nucleic acid industrial park will start construction in the Shanghai Hangzhou Bay Economic & Technological Development Park in the middle of July, with a planned area of 3 square kilometers. A 720-mu (48 hectares) of pilot area will be built for the nucleic acid industries during the early phase, media reports said.

As a leading enterprise in the nucleic acid industry ecosystem of the development park, Hongene Biotech Corporation, a manufacturer of nucleosides, nucleotides and phosphoramidites, settled in the park in 2019 and was put into production in June 2021. Currently, Hongene produces 70 percent of the nucleic acid raw materials in the world with an annual output value of 1.5 billion yuan ($224 million), Guang Ming Daily reported on Sunday.

Hongene's 2.5-billion-yuan worth of microRNA medicine R&D and production base will start construction in July as well in the industrial park, according to the report.

Besides the development of nucleic acid drugs, the industrial park also plans to invest 1.8 billion yuan to build a 120-mu scale of nucleic acid industry technology center with 11 R&D buildings, providing ample space for nucleic acid biomedical research and development enterprises.

The news also raised questions among netizens on social media platforms on whether the setup of the new industrial park is a response to the recent Omicron flare-ups in China. "The biopharmaceutical industry in the park mainly develops various vaccines and drugs based on RNA, which is the direction of future development of the biopharmaceutical industry and has nothing to do with the epidemic," local news outlet The Paper, reported citing a related government department.

The biomedicine industry is an important pillar of Shanghai's strategic emerging industries and one of the three leading industries in Shanghai.

A nucleic acid testing industrial cluster was also set up in a biomedical industrial park in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province, as early as in last September. It gathered nearly 100 companies with businesses ranging from those that supply raw material, and those engaged in vitro diagnosis to medical tests, according to a statement released on the website of the local government.

The establishment of industrial parks could help improve the development of the overall industrial chain, Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based medical observer, told the Global Times on Sunday.

The nucleic acid test of the novel coronavirus in China has become high efficient with low costs. By setting up a sounder industrial chain, if a joint test kit could be developed to test the novel coronavirus and other respiratory infections, it will be great progress for the prevention and control of infectious diseases in China, Tao said.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry in the industrial park in Shanghai has maintained rapid growth. There are more than 20 large-scale biomedical enterprises located in the park, with an annual output value of 6.42 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 23 percent compared with 2020, according to the report.