Winning in the new track! The future of Guangzhou's biopharmaceutical industry, these three companies provide the answer

How can Guangzhou’s nuclear medicine overcome import dependence and achieve independent innovation?

Future industries are the guiding markers of technological revolutions and industrial transformations.

Cities that actively layout future industries are not only predicting tomorrow but are also creating their own future.

In the strategic emerging pillar industry of biomedicine, Guangzhou is determined to win, consolidating its five advantageous fields: biopharmaceuticals, chemical drugs, traditional Chinese medicine, diagnostic reagents, and medical testing, while also focusing on six key areas that will determine the future—in vitro diagnostics, traditional Chinese medicine, preparations for medical institutions, nuclear medicine, cell and gene therapy, and brain-computer interfaces—promoting “breakthroughs in single points and blooming in multiple points.”

From March 10 to 12, organized by the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, N Video reporters participated in an in-depth survey of the entire biomedicine chain in Guangzhou. The cases of three highlighted companies vividly illustrate the industrial layout of this city. Their exploration paths differ but collectively outline a three-dimensional picture of Guangzhou’s biomedicine industry, rooted in the present and positioned for the future.

01/

Xihe Health:

The hard “core” engine of an established traditional pharmaceutical company

In the field of traditional Chinese medicine, Guangzhou has a solid industrial foundation, with the number of traditional Chinese medicine production enterprises (50) ranking first in the province. Among them, the world’s top 500 company, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group, has held the top position in the ranking of Chinese traditional medicine companies for 11 consecutive years, with its renowned products exported to over 40 countries and regions worldwide.

Facing the transformation challenges of its traditional business segments, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group is embarking on a profound self-reform with unprecedented determination. In November last year, the Group announced that it would invest up to 10 billion to 15 billion yuan in research and development during the 14th Five-Year Plan. In the new strategic blueprint, a relatively cutting-edge field—nuclear medicine has been elevated to the same strategic height as traditional advantage platforms such as traditional Chinese medicine and chemical drugs, becoming one of the seven innovation platforms for the Group’s future development.

This layout closely aligns with the forward-looking industrial orientation of not only Guangzhou but the entire province. In June last year, Guangdong explicitly proposed to cultivate several leading nuclear medicine enterprises by 2030 and build a globally competitive industrial cluster. In the recently released “Action Plan for Accelerating the Cultivation and Development of New Tracks to Lead the Construction of a Modern Industrial System in Guangdong Province (2026-2035),” nuclear medicine was also listed as one of the key new tracks for layout.

Strategic implementation requires physical support. In August 2025, Guangzhou Baiyunshan Xihe Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Xihe Health”), co-founded by Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group and the China National Nuclear Corporation, was established in response to this trend. The company collaborates deeply with research institutions such as Dongjiang Laboratory and Xiamen Rare Earth Materials Research Institute, focusing on tackling new isotopes, radioactive drugs, and precise diagnostic and therapeutic technologies.

Xihe Health high-purity nuclear target materials.

During this survey, the research team visited Xihe Health located in Huangpu District. Reporters learned that the core of nuclear medicine lies in the unique properties of radioactive isotopes, mainly divided into diagnostic isotopes and therapeutic isotopes. Diagnostic isotopes can work in coordination with imaging devices such as PET-CT to accurately track and visualize tumor metabolism; therapeutic isotopes can release radiation to “precisely eliminate” cancer cells while protecting surrounding healthy tissues. The integrated technology represented by Gallium-68/Lutetium-177 is currently at the forefront of the application of integrated diagnostic and therapeutic isotopes, achieving the precise medical concept of “what is seen is treated, and what is treated is seen.” For patients with advanced cancer, in the context of significant side effects from traditional chemotherapy and the tendency for targeted and immunotherapy to develop resistance, nuclear medicine offers a precise and efficient new option with its unique mechanism of “physical destruction.”

However, about 90% of the medical isotopes used in our country are dependent on imports, and most radioactive drugs used clinically are generics. Developing a self-controlled nuclear medicine industry has shifted from a “multiple choice question” to a “must-answer question” concerning national strategic security and the health and well-being of the people.

Driven by both policy and industry, shortly after its establishment, Xihe Health successfully achieved the high-quality preparation of the key diagnostic isotope Zirconium-89 using its self-developed domestic solid target system. Currently, the company has built a solid target preparation platform with completely independent intellectual property rights, capable of large-scale production of various key isotopes such as Gallium-68, Zirconium-89, Copper-64, and Rhenium-186, and is tackling more cutting-edge alpha isotopes like Astatine-211 and Lead-203; at the same time, Baiyunshan Xihe has also partnered with Qinshan Technology, which has the only heavy water reactor in the country, to secure a stable supply of beta isotopes. Thus, Xihe Health will simultaneously master two types of isotope resources: accelerator production and reactor production, forming a rare full-chain resource integration capability in the industry.

Xihe Health series of isotope products.

Currently, nuclear medicine has become a hot track for domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies to compete in. In addition to companies like Dongcheng Pharmaceutical and China National Nuclear Corporation, which have long focused on this field, pharmaceutical giants such as Heng Rui and Fosun have also entered the fray. In this competitive landscape, what advantages does Xihe Health in Guangzhou have?

Xihe Health Chairman Liu Hong pointed out that Guangdong Province has one-tenth of the national radioactive drug use licenses (Category IV) in medical institutions, and 90% of these are concentrated in Guangzhou. As a hub of clinical demand, Guangzhou provides the possibility for an efficient closed loop of “R&D—production—clinical application.” Currently, the company has established deep partnerships with over 30 top medical institutions and enterprises, including Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital and Jinan University First Affiliated Hospital, paving the way for rapid technology transformation.

For a century-old enterprise aiming to “recreate a new Guangzhou Pharmaceutical,” nuclear medicine is not just a new business segment; it is also a strategic measure responding to the call for new productive forces, reflecting its dual drive for “technologization” and “internationalization.” In addition to building a global medical isotope production base and radioactive drug innovation center of Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group in Guangzhou, Xihe Health also plans to establish a branch in Hong Kong and strategically layout nodes in Serbia (EU) and Fangchenggang, Guangxi (ASEAN), aiming to form an “industry pattern centered on the Greater Bay Area, radiating nationwide, and competing globally.”

As Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group positions nuclear medicine as a new strategic fulcrum for future growth, its layout is deeply embedded in the overall chess game of industrial upgrading in Guangzhou. Currently, the specialized nuclear medicine park planned and constructed in the China-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City by Guangzhou Development Zone and Huangpu District has not only signed contracts for Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Xihe’s global medical isotope production base and radioactive drug innovation center but has also gathered core enterprises such as Atom High-Tech and Cyclotron Pharmaceutical, initially forming an industrial chain from isotope production to drug R&D. Recently (March 19), the multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced that it will build a radioactive conjugated drug (RDC) production and supply base in this area, marking the continuous improvement of the energy level and attractiveness of this industrial cluster in Guangzhou.

02/

Kingmed Diagnostics:

From “testing samples” to “mining data”

If Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group represents the strategic determination of traditional pharmaceutical companies to enter future tracks, then on the other end of the biomedicine industry map—the in vitro diagnostics (IVD) field, a similarly profound transformation is unfolding.

As a flagship industry in Guangzhou, third-party medical testing ranks first in national market share. Relying on rich medical resources and the integration of AI technology, Guangzhou’s IVD companies are accelerating their evolution towards intelligence, high throughput, and immediacy. Kingmed Diagnostics, a leading company, is a typical representative of this transformation, and its anchor point of change is precisely focused on “data.”

“Today’s third-party medical testing industry is coinciding with a deep adjustment of the economic cycle and the medical policy cycle, facing a major upheaval not seen in 30 years.” On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the company’s establishment in 2024, Kingmed Diagnostics Chairman Liang Yaoming defined this inward-facing self-revolution as a “comprehensive digitization transformation.”

A few years ago, Kingmed Diagnostics exposed a shortcoming when urgently mobilizing resources nationwide. “We needed to spend a lot of manpower just to figure out the real-time operation status of all equipment nationwide,” recalled Liu Si, head of the AI and Data Science Center at Kingmed Diagnostics.

This encounter forced Kingmed to accelerate its digitization transformation process. In 2020, it launched the “Medical Testing 4.0” strategy in collaboration with Siemens, with its core foundation being the data platform it had begun to layout as early as 2018.

At the research site, Liu Si showed the N Video reporters the real-time updated data platform display. The operational status of 50 laboratories nationwide, thousands of devices, and self-built cold chain logistics vehicles, sample flow, and report issuance progress is all clear at a glance. From “invisible” to “visible,” operational management has achieved overall visualization, and a more valuable asset has emerged—data.

As of the time of the survey, Kingmed had accumulated a total testing volume of over 3 billion cases, with a data scale of nearly 30 PB, covering over 90% of the population in the country, constituting one of the largest databases of East Asian populations in the world.

Data itself does not equate to value; governance and application are key. In 2024, following the national “Three-Year Action Plan for Data Elements,” data was explicitly defined as a key production element. Guangzhou City also clearly proposed in its “14th Five-Year Plan” to support biomedicine enterprises in building high-quality data sets and promoting compliant circulation of data elements. Riding on this policy wind, Kingmed Diagnostics systematically cleaned and annotated vast amounts of data, constructing specialized disease datasets covering areas such as infections and rare diseases, and trained the industry’s first vertical large model “Yujian Yiyan” based on this.

For instance, in the field of rare diseases, Kingmed uncovered over 110,000 positive cases from its own data to provide valuable real-world research support for research institutions and pharmaceutical companies.

In the cervical cancer screening field, this large model demonstrated the large-scale efficiency of “human-machine collaboration.” Relying on over 100 million cervical cancer screening samples, Kingmed selected nearly 200,000 image blocks, which were annotated by experienced pathologists to train the AI algorithm, ultimately developing an AI-assisted cervical cancer screening model.

Kingmed Diagnostics’ cervical cancer intelligent screening workstation has improved overall reading speed by ten times.

“Samples are usually prepared and scanned at night, analyzed by AI in the early morning, and by the time doctors start work, the system is ready with digital slices and key views.” According to Liu Si, in cervical cancer screenings, about 92% of samples are actually negative. In the traditional model, pathologists must review the entire slide line by line and view by view to arrive at a “negative” conclusion. However, the AI model significantly compresses the most time-consuming “negative preliminary screening” workload, and the overall reading speed is ten times that of the original.

Devices equipped with cervical cytology digital pathology auxiliary preliminary screening functions.

This cervical cancer screening model successfully verifies the replicability of data value. As of now, Kingmed has launched 32 data products at data exchanges in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing, becoming the first company in the industry to successfully run through the entire process of “data assets entering the table and trading.”

Compared to peers, Dian Diagnostics employs a dual-driven approach of “services + products,” while BGI relies on sequencing advantages to build multimodal large models. Kingmed Diagnostics’ unique path lies in focusing on “data element-driven,” leading to the first qualitative change in the value of data from an internal “tool” to a tradable “asset.”

03/

LinNan Gene:

Overtaking in the CGT field leveraging policy advantages

In Nansha, Guangzhou, the industrial blueprint for cell and gene therapy (CGT) is accelerating from policy planning to clinical efficacy. LinNan Gene Technology (Guangdong) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “LinNan Gene”) is a benchmark enterprise rising from this innovative fertile ground.

As a wholly-owned subsidiary of the national-level specialized and innovative “little giant” company Kanglin Bio, LinNan Gene officially settled in Nansha in January 2025, focusing on the clinical transformation and global commercialization of innovative gene therapy drugs. Its core product, KL003 cell injection, targets transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia.

Guangzhou First People’s Hospital Nansha Hospital collaborates with LinNan Gene to conduct cell and gene therapy for thalassemia patients.

“International peer technology development has taken 19 years, while our KL003 clinical data is even more groundbreaking: The speed of neutrophil and platelet implantation significantly surpasses that of international therapies already on the market, allowing patients to recover faster post-surgery, with fewer side effects and a better treatment experience. At the same time, the treatment cost of the project is only a fraction of similar international products, truly breaking the industry barrier of ‘sky-high therapies’ and turning the cure for thalassemia from an unattainable dream into a treatable, affordable reality, significantly enhancing the global accessibility of advanced gene therapies,” LinNan Gene General Manager Jiang Xiaoli confidently introduced to the research team.

In June 2025, LinNan Gene successfully completed the first nationwide clinical patient discharge after gene therapy for β-thalassemia. According to Jiang Xiaoli, adult thalassemia patients typically require 1000-2000 ml of transfusion monthly; after receiving KL003 gene therapy, the child’s condition fundamentally reversed, eliminating the need for transfusions.

This innovative drug, which has not yet been approved for market, can quickly achieve clinical transformation and effective results in Nansha, thanks to the pioneering trial policies granted to Nansha by the state and the innovative ecosystem built for the biomedicine industry. In recent years, Nansha has launched significant policies such as the “Opinions on Supporting Guangzhou Nansha to Relax Market Access and Strengthen Regulatory System Reform” from three national ministries, as well as the “Nine Policies for Biomedicine,” clearing obstacles for CGT industry development.

Last July, a 19-year-old patient named Xiao Zhi (pseudonym) from Sichuan, who had severe β-thalassemia, successfully recovered and was discharged after receiving KL003 gene therapy in Nansha.

“It is precisely these groundbreaking policies that have made KL003 the only gene therapy product for thalassemia that can be legally conducted in clinical applications in the country, allowing our mature technology to bypass the long approval waiting period and bring hope for life to more patients in advance,” Jiang Xiaoli admitted.

Relying on close cooperation with Guangzhou First People’s Hospital Nansha Hospital, LinNan Gene quickly completed the transformation from technology R&D to clinical treatment. As of the time of publication, a cumulative total of 50 patients have received KL003 treatment in Nansha and have been successfully discharged, with both the treatment scale and efficacy ranking among the top in the world, attracting numerous patients from home and abroad for consultation and treatment. This achievement not only lights up the dawn of life for global β-thalassemia genetic disease patients but also fully demonstrates Guangzhou’s top clinical transformation capabilities in the CGT field.

In just one year, the KL003 project of LinNan Gene has achieved a leap forward from research experiments to clinical treatment, backed by a clear path for Guangzhou’s layout in the new track of cell and gene therapy—policy breakthroughs leading the way, clinical collaboration in relay, and industrial ecosystem momentum. As of now, Nansha has successfully landed nine cutting-edge CGT technologies covering fields such as β-thalassemia, knee osteoarthritis, and strokes, gathering over 40 related enterprises for root development, with the CGT industry cluster effect continuously emerging.

Last year, Guangzhou clearly listed biomedicine and health industries as strategic pillar industries, proposing to create a 300 billion yuan-level industrial cluster within five years to consolidate its position as a global biomedicine innovation highland. The explorations of representative enterprises like Xihe Health, Kingmed Diagnostics, and LinNan Gene are the new prologue to Guangzhou’s development of future industries, reflecting the city’s firm determination to concentrate resources and build momentum. As more enterprises are attracted, and more technological achievements cross the “valley of death” from the laboratory to the market, the 300 billion yuan-level industrial cluster will no longer be just a number on a blueprint, but an anticipated future for Guangzhou.

Planning: Wang Weiguo, Li Yang

Coordination: Yin Lai, Wang Daobin, You Manni

Writing: N Video reporters Huang Haishan, Wang Shiqi, Wu Yueming