TEDA Pioneers New Frontiers in Biomanufacturing

Microorganisms are barely visible to the naked eye. But in TEDA,  laboratories are making their way to the 10,000-ton modern production lines, where they are transformed into pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and daily necessities. Biomanufacturing, one of the six future industries incorporated into the recommendations for the 15th Five-Year Plan, is profoundly impacting our production and daily lives.

As regions nationwide race to deploy biomanufacturing industries, TEDA, leveraging its profound industrial foundation and vibrant innovation ecosystem, is attracting the global industrial chain both upstream and downstream at a faster pace, striving to build a highland for the biomanufacturing industry.

Top-Level Planning Anchors Direction as Industrial Aggregation Effect Continues to Unleash

What is biomanufacturing? Tan Tianwei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and President of Beijing University of Chemical Technology, explains it this way. "Biomanufacturing is a manufacturing process centered on industrial biotechnology, which uses organisms such as enzymes and cells as catalysts, combined with process engineering technology, to produce target products." Its application landscape extends far beyond medicine, spanning across agriculture, chemicals, energy, and materials, and is regarded as a key force leading a new round of scientific and industrial revolution.

Facing this opportunity, Tianjin has acted decisively in its top-level planning, clearly stipulating in the recommendations for the 15th Five-Year Plan the priority development of five major high-growth tracks, including biomanufacturing, and proposing in the Tianjin Action Plan for Promoting the Innovative Development of Biomanufacturing (2026-2030) (Draft for Comments) to "support the construction of the TEDA biomanufacturing industry base". Meanwhile, as early as the end of 2025, TEDA had already issued the TEDA Action Plan for Cultivating and Developing Future Industries (2025-2027), which designates biomanufacturing as one of the four cornerstone tracks in its "4+2+X" future industry system.

In fact, TEDA's confidence in the biomanufacturing sector stems not only from forward-looking industrial planning, but more deeply from years of industrial accumulation. TEDA boasts advanced manufacturing industrial clusters in fields such as automobiles and high-end equipment, next-generation information technology, new chemical materials, and healthcare, providing rich supporting resources and application scenarios for the development of the biomanufacturing industry. As a demonstration area for Tianjin's biomanufacturing industry, TEDA's biomanufacturing sector covers multiple segments such as biomedicine, the beauty economy, food and wellness, modern agriculture, and biomanufacturing equipment，gathering a cluster of leading enterprises including Novo Nordisk, CanSino, Asymchem, Uniongen, Bloomage Biotech, Jiahe Biotech, Boyun Biotech, and Jinya Electronics, thereby building a highly resilient and collaboratively developed biomanufacturing industrial chain.

Chinese and Foreign Enterprises Continue to Increase Investment as Industrial Vitality Bursts Forth

Attracted by TEDA's robust industrial foundation and strong industrial collaboration capabilities, a group of multinational corporations and industry leaders have continuously increased investment, expanded production, and upgraded their strategic layouts here, serving as a powerful testament to the vibrant growth of the regional biomanufacturing industry.

Recently, global biopharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk announced an additional investment of RMB200 million in its Tianjin manufacturing plant to expand its innovative drug production lines. This follows other significant layouts in TEDA by the company, including an RMB4 billion investment in 2024 to build a sterile preparation expansion project and an investment of approximately RMB8 billion in 2025 for a laboratory expansion project. Most notably, driven by TEDA, Novo Nordisk's GLP-1 products are being locally produced on a pilot basis. Kyinsu®, the world's first and currently only approved basal insulin/GLP-1 RA weekly combination product independently developed by the company, completed its world's first shipment right from the Tianjin manufacturing plant not long ago. "As an important pivot in Novo Nordisk's global supply network, the Tianjin production plant will continue to undertake the localized production of innovative products." The words of Kasper Bødker Mejlvang, Executive Vice President, Global Manufacturing & Supply at Novo Nordisk, have reflected the confidence of multinational corporations in the development of TEDA's biomanufacturing industry.

Similarly, Asymchem Labs. is expanding its strategic footprint. The group has invested RMB2 billion in TEDA's Nucleic Acid Medicine Industrial Park to establish an integrated R&D and manufacturing project for chemical macromolecule innovative drug CDMO, further strengthening the regional nucleic acid medicine industrial chain. According to statistics, TEDA currently has over 40 enterprises supporting nucleic acid drugs, forming a full-chain industrial chain covering key links such as nucleic acid raw materials and APIs, nucleic acid vaccines, synthesis equipment, purification devices and packing materials, nucleic acid drug delivery carriers, nucleic acid preparations, and related technical services. A nucleic acid drug industrial base—the largest in northern China—has begun to take shape.

In addition to biomedicine, biomanufacturing sub-tracks such as the beauty economy, green materials, and modern agriculture are also seeing dense project deployments. Enterprises like Imeik and GeneScience Pharmaceutical have signed letters of intent for cooperation with TEDA, with cooperation fields involving functional skincare products and high-end medical aesthetic devices. The Bohai Bay of Beauty JenKem Technology Health Park project has commenced construction. Yuantian Biotechnology's enzymatic recycled PTA project has landed in TEDA. Incotec, a global seed enhancement technology expert, has upgraded its Tianjin company into its China Operational Management Center. Novonesis' new comprehensive building has been put into use. TEDA's biomanufacturing is presenting a booming development momentum characterized by multiple blossom points and vigorous upward growth.

Pilot-Scale Platforms Bridge the "Last Mile" of Achievement Transformation

Biomanufacturing has long facing pain points such as the difficulties in the lab-to-market activities and the scale-up of small-scale testing technologies. To solve this problem, TEDA has issued the Action Plan of Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area for the Innovative Development of Manufacturing Pilot-Scale Platforms (2026-2028) (Trial), and simultaneously compiled a guide for cultivating pilot-scale platforms, innovatively establishing a four-tier closed-loop cultivation system at the stages of foundation, reserve, cultivation, and promotion to provide guarantees for the standardized development and full-cycle cultivation of manufacturing pilot-scale platforms. Meanwhile, TEDA has also established the "TEDA Pilot-Scale Platform Seed Pool" and organized activities such as supply-demand matchmaking and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei research exchanges, taking the lead to promote more technological achievements to step out of the laboratory and onto the production line.

In the field of biomanufacturing, TEDA has already boasted pilot-scale platforms such as the Bloomage Biotech Pilot Achievement Transformation Center, Bohai Haijing Pilot Platform, and Asymchem Synthetic Biology CDMO Platform, constructing a complete transformation channel of "R&D—Pilot Scale-up—Mass Production" to provide solid support for continuous breakthroughs in biomanufacturing.

A prime example is the Bloomage Biotech Pilot Achievement Transformation Center. As one of the first batch of national five-star biomanufacturing pilot capability platforms, the center has invested nearly RMB3 billion and is equipped with 64 specialized pilot production lines, capable of undertaking the pilot-scale and small-scale commercial production of various bioactive raw material products for pharmaceutical, skincare, and food-grade applications. "Every penny of a start-up enterprise must be spent where it counts most. After completing laboratory-scale small tests, they are in urgent need of cost-effective pilot platforms to quickly complete the validation of achievement transformation," said Wang Enxu, General Manager of the Bloomage Biotech Pilot Achievement Transformation Center, adding that the center possesses a mature pilot platform, rich experience, and a team of senior experts to safeguard these technology transformations.

To date, the platform has achieved technology transformations for dozens of universities and start-ups, providing a replicable "pilot model" for achievements in the field of synthetic biology. In addition, Bloomage Biotech has joined hands with TEDA to promote the construction of the Tianjin Industrialization Base of the National Technology Innovation Center for Synthetic Biology, making every effort to break through the bottlenecks in the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements. 

Industry-University-Research Collaborative Innovation Continues to Gain Momentum

On the industry-university-research front, TEDA collaborates with universities and top-tier research institutions to deeply embed education, technology, talent, and R&D into its industrial network, continuously translating them into real momentum. In the first half of this year, TEDA signed a cooperation agreement with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS),and the two sides will jointly carry out construction and service work for the UCAS (Binhai) Frontier Industry Base. By docking and introducing the university's technological innovation achievements to carry out incubation, transformation, and industrial operation, they aim to form an integrated innovation mechanism of "government, industry, academia, research, and application". It is precisely through this collaborative eco-model between universities and local governments that TEDA continuously activates its innovation momentum and drives more scientific and technological achievements from laboratories to production lines.

While the strategic cooperation between the government and universities is steadily advancing,enterprises and universities are also deepening their collaboration in innovation, generating considerable industrial returns. Tianjin University of Science and Technology (TUST), leveraging its traditional strengths in light industry and fermentation, is empowering biotechnology with AI. It has established 19 research teams and, through technology transfer and other forms of industry-academia collaboration, has helped enterprises increase output value by tens of billions of yuan in total. Through its cooperation with Tianjin University of Science & Technology, Jiahe Biotech has established its R&D headquarters in TEDA to promote the development of crop protection formulations. Meanwhile, Cosychem grasped the national strategic opportunity of the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, successively establishing joint nucleic acid technology experimental platforms with universities such as Peking University, Nankai University, and Tsinghua University, thereby achieving cross-regional and efficient allocation of scientific research resources among the three places. In the field of innovative drugs, the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, in collaboration with a team from Tsinghua University, officially released the GalaxyVS AI-powered virtual screening platform. Globally, this platform achieves second-level virtual screening of nearly 100 billion synthesizable chemical spaces for the first time, shortening the early drug screening process to dozens of seconds. TEDA plans to leverage this platform to vigorously attract and nurture innovative drug development companies, driving the development of the regional biomanufacturing industry to a new level.

With the successive establishment of alliances such as the Tianjin AI + Medical Industry Alliance, the TEDA Nucleic Acid Industry Alliance, the TEDA Medical Device Industry Alliance, and the Bohai Bay of Beauty Industry Alliance, TEDA has successfully opened up channels for information flow and resource sharing among enterprises, universities, and research institutes, promoting the efficient coupling of innovation factors and accelerating collaborative innovation.

With a solid foundation laid, the sails are set. In the race of biomanufacturing, a future industry, TEDA is fully prepared and poised for action, with every new project, every new production line, and every experiment accumulating strength for the future. And we look forward to it with great anticipation.