Construction on the Shanghai State Engineering Center for Biochips, which gained approval from the central government in February, broke ground on Saturday in the city's noted pharmaceutical industrial park -- Zhangjiang High-Tech Park.

The center, developed by Shanghai Biotech Co Ltd with the financial support of both the local and central government, will focus on developing a research and development (R&D) platform for the country's biotech industry, according to local authorities.

Biochips, which combine information technology and biotechnology, have been the focus of cutting-edge research around the world since the early 1990s.

Like a computer chip that can perform millions of mathematical operations in one second, a biochip can perform thousands of biological operations, such as decoding genes, in a few seconds.

The technology can be widely used in drug innovation, clinical diagnosis and environmental protection.

Vice Mayor Zhou Yupeng, who was present at the center?s construction site on Saturday, said that the city intends to step up efforts to combine the center?s R&D capability with the city's pharmaceutical industry.

"Our goal is to foster the development of a world-class biochip industrial park," said Zhou. He revealed that Shanghai authorities had approved the biochip engineering center as a key science project for the next three years.

(China Daily March 31, 2003)