The Industrial Innovation Center for Engineering Biology (hereinafter referred to as the “Innovation Center”), approved by the Development and Reform Commission of Shenzhen Municipality with a budget of RMB 92.16 million, spans a total area of 12,000 square meters.

The Innovation Center aligns with national strategic needs and the main economic battlefield, supporting Guangming Science City’s vision of “strategically establishing major innovation platforms and incubators”. It accelerates Shenzhen’s comprehensive development in synthetic biology research, platform construction, and application transformation, creating an open, shared, forward-thinking, and interdisciplinary innovation platform. By fostering multi-stakeholder collaboration, multi-element linkage, and multi-disciplinary synergy, it builds a comprehensive innovation ecosystem, driving Guangming Science City to become a national hub for the synthetic biology industry. This contributes to Shenzhen’s development as a comprehensive national science center and supports the construction of the Shenzhen Pilot Demonstration Area of Socialism and Guangming Science City.

The Innovation Center adopts the country's first "Upstairs-Downstairs Innovation and Entrepreneurship Complex" model, with industrial application research upstairs and enterprise incubation management downstairs as the core of the construction. Application research relies on large facilities and the research results of the Institute of Synthetic Biology to carry out technical cooperation. Incubation management connects the innovation sources and attracts startup companies with core competitiveness from society,providing a high-quality entrepreneurial environment. lt creates an open and shared office space and high-end experimental technology platform, enabling enterprises to "move in with their bags." Utilizing top research resources like Institute of Synthetic Biology, Shenzhen university of advanced technology and Shenzhen Synthetic Biology Infrastructure, it swiftly achieves technology development iterations.This effectively addresses the bottleneck of advanced experimental equipment shortage for startups and meets the demand for professional technical cooperation, significantly shortening the time cycle from original innovation to industrial transformation. Empowered by the nation's first synthetic biology special policy, it alleviates initial funding pressures for enterprises, promoting their high-quality development.

The Innovation Center has pioneered a new approach to industrial incubation, effectively overcoming the traditional time barriers from "0 to 1 to 10" and establishing a comprehensive "research-transformation-industry" model for enterprise development. This approach has been recognized as a crucial component of the synthetic biology(also known as engineering biology)innovation ecosystem in Shenzhen and has been featured by the National Development and Reform Commission as part of the 47 exemplary practices from Shenzhen.

By effectively bridging basic research and industrial needs, the Innovation Center overcomes spatial and temporal barriers in the “0 to 1” technology transfer process, creating a demonstrable effect. The synthetic biology industrial park currently under development supports the “1 to 10” phase of industrial accumulation.