CHINESE INSTITUTE BOOSTS INDUSTRY TIES

Abstract

SITTING IN HIS 100-sq-ft office piled high with academic journals and documents on a Friday afternoon, professor Wen Liu clicks through PowerPoint slides describing his lab’s recent breakthroughs in the syntheses of antibiotic compounds. Liu’s office in downtown Shanghai, though, is just a way station for the breakthroughs. They will move on to a recently built compound 90 miles away, where Liu has set up a different team to explore ways of applying his lab’s findings to the production of pharmaceuticals. Liu has a typical academic role at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry—one of China’s premier chemical research institutions, affiliated with the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences—and he also heads an enterprise in the nearby city of Huzhou, providing technological support for pharmaceutical companies. Established in July 2010, the Huzhou Biomanufacturing Innovation Center is a joint venture between SIOC and the local government. The center aims to improve the costeffectiveness of antibioti...