Beijing is strengthening the development of its synthetic biology industry, as well as innovation in the sector, with this year witnessing a surge in the number of biopharmaceutical enterprises in one of the city's southern suburbs.

There are now more than 4,800 biopharmaceutical companies in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (BDA), up from approximately 4,200 last year, Liu Li, deputy director of the area's management committee, revealed at the third conference of the Boao Forum for Asia's Global Health Forum, which concluded on Thursday.

"As disruptive and frontier technology, synthetic biology is becoming a new engine for the creation of new quality productive forces," Liu said. "Boasting abundant resources in sci-tech innovation and diverse application scenarios, Beijing has unique advantages to develop a synthetic biomanufacturing industry."

According to Liu, the BDA will make efforts to strengthen its supervision mechanism and expand its industrial space. It plans to support leading synthetic biology enterprises to share test platforms and open-source technology platforms with micro, small and medium-sized firms in the city, accelerating product research and development, product design and final product testing.

Beijing attaches great importance to the development of its synthetic biology industry. At the beginning of this year, construction began on a synthetic biomanufacturing technology innovation center in Changping District's Future Science City, and on a synthetic biology intelligent manufacturing industry cluster in Zhongguancun, located in Haidian District.