In order to fulfill the strategic deployment of the Central Committee of CPC and the State Council on promoting Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA)’s development and opening-up to the outside world, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and Tianjin Municipal People’s Government signed the Agreement on Co-building China International Innovation Zone of Biotechnology and Medicine (BioMed Zone) on June 26, 2006, aiming to create a new economic growth point and stimulate the giant leap-forward development of China’s biotechnology and medical industry. On June 26, 2007, four ministries, including MOST, Ministry of Commerce (MOC), Ministry of Health (MOH) and State Food and Drug Administration (SDA) and Tianjin Municipal People’s Government held a press release conference and announced the Opinions in Jointly Building BioMed Zone by the “4 Ministries+ 1 Municipality”. On June 25, 2009, Liu Yandong, State Councilor and member of Political Bureau of CPC Central Committee, accompanied by Zhang Gaoli, member of Political Bureau of CPC Central Committee and secretary of CPC Tianjin Municipal Committee, Li Xueyong, secretary of Party Leadership Group of MOST and MOST Vice Minister, Huang Xingguo, deputy party secretary of CPC Tianjin Municipal Committee and Mayor of Tianjin and other officials, unveiled the plaque to open Tianjin International Joint Academy of Biotechnology & Medicine (TJAB), symbolizing TJAB’s official launching.  

As the core and symbol of BioMed Zone, TJAB received great financial support from the government, with a total fund of RMB 1.1 billion, including a basic construction fund of RMB 500 million raised by TEDA Administrative Commission and a fund for technology platforms construction and operation of RMB 600 million transferred from TBNA’s construction expenses allocated from state finance. TJAB is located at the intersection of  DongTing Road and 13^th Ave. of TEDA, with a land area of over 300 mu, a planned construction area of 350,000 m². The I Phase of 70,000 m² TJAB buildings, including Experiment Building, General Building and etc., has been put into service in June 2009. The 19 floors Experiment Building occupies a construction area of 55,000 m² and has over 70 labs with complete and modernized equipments and instruments. It will meet the requirements of both the construction of technology platforms and stationed R&D teams in TJAB.

To ensure the spirits of TJAB, that is, Collaboration, Opening-up and Mobility, the joint academy cooperates with state key research institutes and innovation and R&D teams both at home and abroad, refers to the mode of R&D centers of famous international medical groups and adopts the council leadership and president responsibly system. On December 19, 2006, former MOST minister Xu Guanhua and Mayor Dai Xianglong issued Letters of Appointment to academician Rao Zihe, the first president of TJAB, academician Chen Zhu, director of TJAB’s Advisory Committee of Experts and other 9 vice presidents at the academy’s foundation laying ceremony. Through global recruitment, three full-time vice presidents are finally introduced into TJAB, including Zhao Yu, Zhou Zeqi and Zhang Yaozhou. They set up a standing work team to push forward the development of the academy.

Endorsed by MOST and MOH, organized by Tianjin Municipal Science and Technology Commission (TSTC), TJAB, along with several other excellent academic and industrial entities in the city, establish a fully integrated drug discovery and development facility as one of the key components of Key State Project of Innovative Drugs.  The facility is composed of 4 core technical platforms in TJAB R&D building and 7 supporting technology platforms through extensive collaborations with academic and industrial entities in Tianjin. TJAB offers fully integrated “one-stop” service with each supporting platforms having representative office at TJAB R&D building. TJAB build up a state of art drug discovery and development technology system with aim to provide the best facility and service to the excellent oversea talents to develop, eventually commercialize their projects; enable Tianjin Binhai New Area as the most important cluster of biomedical innovation and commercialization in China.

Talents and projects are the priorities of TJAB. We sincerely invite excellent talents in the field of biomedicine both at home and abroad to develop your careers at TJAB. TJAB is specially interested in proprietary R&D projects with commercialization potential in the area of drugs, vaccines, clinical diagnostic kit, and medical instruments etc.. TJAB will offer you one-stop and one-package services and professional common technology facility to expedite the processes from drug discovery to commercialization .

TJAB experiment “Tianjin Binhai New Area Model” in operation which is “organized by government, driven by market;  owned by state, managed by enterprises; setting-up for broad collabration, opening-up to all friends; international cooperation and multilateral acknowledgement”.  TJAB aims to serve as a magnet for talents, a bridge for international cooperation, and a role model for bio-medical technology R&D in China, and to become a leading innovation source of bio-medical industry for Tianjin and even the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. It will become an internationally renowned bio-medical innovation base in China, and enable giant leaps in the development of bio-medical industry in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.