File photo of Tianjin International Joint Academy of Biomedicine. (Photo: tjab.org)

Tianjin is on the fast track in developing a biomedicine industry to create a new powerhouse to buoy the municipality's development.

In partnership with the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Tianjin municipal government has set up the Tianjin International Joint Academy of Biomedicine. To date, the academy has attracted over 370 projects and incubated over 280 small and medium- sized companies.

"We have been stepping up efforts in researching and developing new medicines. Now we have over 10 kinds of new medicines under different phases of development. Among them, three were developed by the academy and went on to phases of clinical research. The rest were developed by companies that we incubated," said Huang Yalou, Party secretary of the Tianjin International Joint Academy of Biomedicine.

"We aim to develop biomedicine as the new driving engine of Tianjin's economy," said Huang.