The Cuiheng New District session of the 2026 Biomedical Innovation Achievements Outreach Program (Zhongshan) Matchmaking Conference was held at the Zhongshan Life Science Park on September 5.

Speaking as an enterprise representative, Wang Chunhe, founder and chairman of Dartsbio Pharmaceuticals, said the company's independently developed migraine drug had been licensed overseas in a deal totaling 1.1 billion US dollars, making it China's first homegrown non-opioid biologic analgesic to be licensed abroad.

Such a "first" is not an isolated case in Zhongshan's pharmaceutical sector.

In recent years, the cumulative value of overseas licensing deals by Zhongshan drugmakers has repeatedly hit new highs: Akeso Inc out-licensed its bispecific antibody ivonescimab for up to 5 billion US dollars, setting a record for China's bispecific antibody exports; Usynova licensed UA022 to AstraZeneca for 419 million US dollars; and Zhongzhi Pharmaceutical's micro-milled "Cao Jing Hua" granules were registered as a dietary supplement with the US Food and Drug Administration, marking a breakthrough in the international registration of traditional Chinese medicine.

As a major biomedicine hub in the Greater Bay Area, Zhongshan has cultivated the industry for more than three decades and now hosts over 600 biomedicine-related companies. A growing number of innovative drugmakers, equipped with world-leading technologies, are boldly venturing into overseas markets, as Zhongshan-made medicines integrate more rapidly into the global biomedical innovation system.