A view of Shanghai Photo:Xinhua

Shanghai will introduce an action plan for gene therapy in 2023, following a plan to promote cell therapy in 2022, a Shanghai official said on Tuesday.

The move showcases the city's aim of standing at the forefront of global cell therapy technology.

"Last year, Shanghai issued an action plan to promote technological innovation and industrial development of cell therapy, and this year, we will introduce an action plan for gene therapy," Zhu Qigao, deputy director of the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality, said on Tuesday at the 25th Shanghai International Forum on Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Industry (BIO-FORUM 2023). 

The forum, which runs from Tuesday to Thursday, focuses on nucleic acid drugs, cell and gene therapy (CGT), synthetic biology, antibody drugs, biomedical engineering, Yangtze River Delta regional cooperation, food and drug safety, human genetic resources, biosafety and other hot topics, according to the forum's official website.

CGT is dubbed as the future industry that is expected to bring hope to cancer patients and is deemed as the next growth driver of biopharmaceutics industry.

The potential action plan for gene therapy is seen as a further step forward toward Shanghai's goal to build a world-class biomedical industry cluster and transform itself into an internationally influential biomedical innovation highland, which is also part of Shanghai's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) in technology.

In November 2022, Shanghai issued the Action Plan for Promoting Scientific and Technological Innovation and Industrial Development of Cell Therapy in Shanghai (2022-2024), which set several goals.

The goals include achieving an industry scale of 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) by 2024, cultivating more than five cell therapy industry clusters, and building 20 cell therapy innovation bases, platforms, key laboratories and technological innovation centers.

In a recent example, a 77,000-square-meter precision medical industry base opened on April 21 in the Lingang new area of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone. The base is a service base for the commercial production of single gene cell therapy rarely seen in the world, according to China Economics Weekly.

Biomedicine is one of the four core industries in Lingang. 

Shanghai's first dedicated industrial park for CGT will be unveiled later in 2023 in the latest bid to implement Shanghai's three-year action plan for the booming sector, according to Shanghai Municipality in early April.

Global Times