China is planning to build the country's first major light facility in Shanghai's Zhangjiang High-Tech Park during the next five years. It will significantly boost the country's overall competitiveness in medical research, particularly in life sciences, according to a local scientist.

When complete, the facility, known as "Shanghai synchrotrons radiation facility," will help detect cancer in patients in the very early stages.

"We expect this facility to become a cutting-edge multidiscipline research center in China," said Xu Hongjie, director of the Shanghai Institute of Nuclear Research, who heads the project.

Jointly proposed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai government in 1995, the project is expected to start next August and be completed by the end of 2008. However, it is still awaiting final approval from the central government.

The 30,000-plus-square-meter facility is being hailed as the country's biggest-ever scientific equipment project. Its total investment is 1.2 billion yuan (US$144.6 million), researchers said.

It uses state-of-the-art "synchrotrons radiation" technology to create the super beams by accelerating electric particles, whose lightness is up to 1 billion times greater than a normal X-ray can generate.

The beams could be transferred to outside users via optical cables.

The beams can be used to detect the minute structure of human proteins hundreds of times more effectively than normal X-rays.

Scientists consider it as a must to measure the complex structures of human proteins that are related to various biological phenomena, such as why people's life span differs and how people age. It takes up to several years to measure each human protein. Only 20,000 of the total 100,000-plus human proteins have so far been measured in the world, researchers said.

Doctors can use the facility's beam to detect a tumor in 1 millimeter without causing additional harm to patients. Normal X-rays can only locate a tumor above 1 centimeter.

(Eastday.com September 21, 2003)