(Photo: Xinhua)

Industry leaders and bio-medical experts gathered in Chicago's Schaumburg on Thursday to participate in the China-America Bio-Partnering Forum as US venture capital set eye on China's rapidly developing bio-medical market and innovation start-ups.

"One of the main reasons that I wanted to attend is recognizing the increasing importance of China, particularly innovation within China," Scott C Brun, Head of AbbVie Ventures told Xinhua. "Establishing partnerships with those innovators that can help us achieve our mission of developing new therapeutics for patients in need."

This year's forum brought industry leaders like AbbVie, Baxter, Sequoia, Pfizer as well as research institutes like Abbott Laboratories and University of Chicago. Bio-medical venture from China like C-Bridge Capital, Yuanming Capital and dozens of bio-medical start-ups also joined the forum.

"There has been a fever in bio-medical investment this year," said Zhu Gui-Dong, who is a co-host of the forum. "We have witnessed the largest bio-medical investment in history between the two countries, about $22 billion in venture capital investment."

Zhu said the most popular area of investment was in anti-tumor immunotherapy, especially in the CAR T area where many Chinese innovation start-ups drew attention.

"There's a lot of creative science in China. We'd like to learn more about it," Scott C Brun said. "In China there are a number of a well educated scientific innovators. There's increasing source of funding. There are changes in the regulatory environment that is helping to make drug development more time and resource effective. So I think all those things lead to our interest."