A world-class biopharmaceutical industrial cluster featuring a deep integration of innovation, capital and talents should take shape in Shanghai at a faster speed, said Shanghai's Mayor Gong Zheng at the International Biopharma Industry Week Shanghai 2022 (IBIWS) which kicked off on Monday.

Industry leaders including Roche, AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim are participating in the five-day event which comprises nearly 40 forums and activities.

At the opening ceremony on Monday, Zhongshan Hospital and Rui Jin Hospital was accredited by the municipal government as Shanghai's first bases to advance integrated innovation between industries and hospitals.

Small molecule drugs, new types of vaccines and new-generation antibody drugs will be the major sectors that Shanghai's biopharmaceutical companies will focus on in the near future, according to attendees of the IBIWS.

The annual output of Shanghai's biopharmaceutical industry reached 761.7 billion yuan ($108.1 billion) in 2021, up from 383.3 billion yuan in 2019. Despite COVID-19, the industrial output of biopharmaceutical companies in Shanghai increased 4.6 percent year-on-year to reach 616.6 billion yuan in the first three quarters of the year.

According to Wu Jincheng, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, IBIWS creates an important platform to optimize the industrial ecosystem of biopharmaceutical companies in the Yangtze River Delta region and accelerate the high-quality development of the industry.