A staff member works at a lab of Novo Nordisk (China) Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in north China's Tianjin, Sept. 22, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

A group of Chinese researchers have created a gene target therapy drug for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS.

SineuGene Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company, successfully completed a clinical drug delivery attempt of adeno-associated virus vector gene therapy for ALS.

The company's co-founder and CEO Peng Lin acknowledged that treating ALS is a world-wide challenge. "Based on the basic research achievements in neuroscience of the Tsinghua University School of Medicine, we developed the drug and completed the transformation of the research result within two years."

The company is currently promoting the drug to ALS patients soon.

Cell and gene therapy is one of the potential future businesses for Beijing. The city has released an implementation plan for establishing a world-leading source of future industries.

The implementation strategy focuses on six fields such as information, health, manufacturing, energy, materials and space.

The added value of Beijing's strategic emerging industries in 2021 was 996.16 billion yuan (about $139.2 billion), a 14% increase year on year.

Beijing's story is an epitome of China's efforts to foster new development engines by actively developing emerging industries and future industries.

In 2021, future industries was included in China's Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and Vision 2035.

China hosted its annual Central Economic Work Conference at the end of this year, during which the country's economic work in 2023 was evaluated, the current economic situation was analyzed and next year's economic work was planned.

The meeting urged promoting industrial innovation through sci-tech innovation, and in particular forging new industries, models and impetus with disruptive and cutting-edge technology.

It advocated for the development of strategic emerging industries such as biological manufacturing, commercial space industry and low-altitude economy, as well as the creation of new arenas for future industries such as quantum technology and life sciences.

At present, seven provinces and municipalities, as well as more than 20 prefecture-level cities nationwide, have issued more than 30 policy documents relevant to the future industries.

According to Jiang Jiang, an official with the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, the main composition of China's future industries is cutting-edge technologies such as new energy, artificial intelligence, biological manufacturing, green low-carbon, and quantum computing, along with a large number of new business forms, new models and new industries derived from their applications.

Future industries represent a new direction in sci-tech and industrial development, said Han Jian, head of Future Industries Research Center under the China Center for Information Industry Development, noting that the future industries are highly dependent on basic research and innovation, and have great development potential.

In recent years, south China's Shenzhen city has promoted the development of basic research platforms to aid in studies in brain science, precision medicine imaging, supercomputing, free electron laser, synchrotron radiation light source and material genome.

Last year, the city announced a policy to boost critical emerging industries and foster future industries.

Shenzhen-based BYD announced the production of its 6 millionth new energy vehicle (NEV) on November 24 this year.

In the first three quarters of this year, the output of NEVs in Shenzhen increased by 125.8%, official data revealed.

The added value of Shenzhen's strategic emerging industries reached 1.039 trillion yuan in the first three quarters of 2023, up 14% year on year, and accounted for 42.5% of the GDP, up from 37.7% in 2019.

The strategic emerging industries have been the driving engine behind Shenzhen's high quality development.

Since the beginning of 2023, China has continued to increase its support for future industries. To promote the deployment of new technologies and new goods, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology organized innovation projects in four major fields such as metaverse, humanoid robot, brain-computer interface, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Several AI-related products made their global debut in July 2023 during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2023 in Shanghai.

Shanghai Westwell Technology Co., Ltd, which uses AI to explore developments in autonomous logistics, attended the conference with its first battery-swapping driverless vehicle.

The tractor, which is equipped with a 360-degree sensory system for traffic monitoring and driving guidance, can fully recharge without human involvement and can carry up to 40 tonnes of objects.

According to Westwell, the new product will be put into operation at several airports in the near future. Westwell's products, which include full-stack intelligent port solutions and driverless container trucks, have been exported to some countries including Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Malaysia.

China has already met the preliminarily criteria for developing future industries, said Pan Jiaofeng, President of Institutes of Science and Development under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Pan added that the country has a relatively excellent industry system, rapidly increasing research and development investment of the whole society, a diverse and huge market, qualified talents and local initiatives.

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