Shanghai Biomedical Frontier Industry Innovation Centre (SH-INNO) has convened the inaugural meeting of its Science and Technology Application Advisory Board (aSAB) and simultaneously held the first project roadshow under its new INNO Agile venture model, marking a systematic push into open-innovation sourcing and early-stage concept validation.

The aSAB draws on academic leaders from top universities and hospitals alongside industry veterans with international pharma R&D experience across cardiovascular, autoimmune, anti-infective, paediatric rare disease, and drug formulation domains, and will flexibly form cross-disciplinary evaluation teams to assess early technologies with both scientific rigour and industrial perspective.

The INNO Agile model pairs scientist principal investigators with incubation managers and SH-INNO staff in a lightweight governance structure backed by concept-validation funding and dual-track exit mechanisms.

Since its launch, SH-INNO has attracted 31 resident enterprises, with over 50 projects incubated including internal ventures from Eli Lilly and Bayer, reaching 85% occupancy. The aSAB and INNO Agile mechanism extend the centre's capability from project origination through concept validation to translation, positioning SH-INNO as a structured interface between Chinese science and global pharma deal flow.