The second International Biology and Health Industry Expo (IBHIE) will be held in China’s Optics Valley from June 30 to July 2, according to a news conference held on June 16 in Wuhan, Hubei province.

The news conference was attended by reporters from more than 30 media outlets. Dan Changchun, deputy secretary of the Party Working Committee of East Lake High-tech Development Zone also attended the news conference.

The second IBHIE will be hosted by Wuhan municipal government, guided by the Belt and Road Initiative.

The expo, which has a theme of “innovation, life and health”, will be aimed at promoting supply-side structural reform to the bio-health industry as well as building an innovative system for the coordinated development of hospitals, medical research institutions and companies.

The expo, covering an area of about 20,000 square meters, will attract lots of people with professional skills in biological research, medicine and finance. It will be a comprehensive platform for policy discussion, academic communication, and project cooperation.

More than 10 professional forums will be held during the expo, which leaders from the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Science and Technology, and China Food and Drug Administration will also attend.

There will be more than 200 exhibition booths for the expo, exhibiting advanced medicines, medical equipment and technologies.

Over 250 exhibitors will attend the expo, including representatives from Sanofi, Merck, Novo Nordisk and Sinopharm.

Significantly the Beijing Genomics Institute will launch its latest BGISEQ-50 high-throughput sequencing system during the expo. Meanwhile, the world’s first light spindle magnetic resonance machine as well as the world’s first electrocardiograph especially designed for children will also be shown at the expo.

Gao Fu, chairman of the Asian Federation of Biotechnology (AFOB), will take the lead in hosting a summit on biotechnology, together with experts on the subject from South Korea, Japan, India, Thailand and Vietnam. Also, Gao will announce the building of an office for AFOB in Wuhan, which is regarded as a biotechnological communication and cooperation center in Asia.