GE, GDD inks deal to boost biomedicine development

Guangzhou International Bio Island in GDD is striving to build a world leading research and development center for biomedicine. [Photo by Zeng Kaigang]

GE Healthcare Life Sciences signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Guangzhou's Huangpu district, which is also known as Guangzhou Development District (GDD), on Nov 27 to co-build the Guangzhou Bioprocess Academy. 

GE Healthcare Life Sciences is an important part of General Electric Company (GE), one of the largest infrastructure companies in the world. It is dedicated to helping life science researchers and biopharmaceutical manufacturers invent, manufacture, and use new therapies and precision medicines.

Guangzhou Bioprocess Academy, which has an overall investment of $10 million, has been designed to train over 1,000 applied talents in biomedicine. 

It will offer training services that meet the good manufacturing practice (GMP) standard, introducing courses and resources from the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT), including the latest production technology and processes of biopharmaceutical drugs.

Support in areas including training equipment, equipment maintenance, course design, and teacher training will be provided by GE Healthcare Life Sciences.

Being the first of its kind in South China focusing on the cultivation of talents in biopharmaceutical back-end production, the academy has started construction and is expected to be put into operation in September 2020.

The academy will also carry out academic cooperation with universities in Guangdong province to boost the transformation of academic talents to application oriented talents.

Emmanuel Ligner, CEO and president of GE Healthcare Life Sciences, said that Guangdong is one of the development strategic centers for China's biopharmaceutical industry, as well as the strategic development base for GE's development in South China and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Yu Lihua, general manager of GE Healthcare Life Sciences China, said that GE has been a long-term cooperation partner of Chinese pharmaceutical companies and that GE is willing to build more talent cultivation bases like the academy in Guangzhou together with local governments and companies.

Currently, GDD has clustered more than 1,000 biopharmaceutical companies, accounting for 60 percent of the total number in Guangzhou. It has also formed an industrial structure with six core areas, namely pharmaceutical manufacturing, medical equipment, stem cell and regenerative medicine, precision medicine, in-vitro diagnosis, as well as examining and testing.

GDD is striving to build a biomedicine industry cluster at the hundred billion yuan ($14.22 billion) level by the end of 2020 to bolster the construction of a global biomedicine ecosystem in Guangzhou.

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