The Minister of Science, Technological Development and Innovation in the Government of the Republic of Serbia Jelena Begović on 26 June 2023 visited BGI Group, a leading Chinese company in the field of biotechnology and biomedicine in Tianjin, with which the Government of Serbia has been successfully cooperating for three years.

On that occasion, Begović in a statement for the Tanjug agency pointed out the importance of the assistance that the BGI Group provided to Serbia during the coronavirus pandemic, which was primarily reflected in the donation for the Fire Eye laboratories in Niš and Belgrade, as well as in the establishment of the Center for Genome Sequencing and Bioinformatics. The Center primarily conducts analyzes in the field of healthcare and personalized medicine, and the goal is to provide our citizens with the most modern methods of treatment, diagnosis and prevention of disease occurrence, Minister stated. The development of technology, as she explained, can also give us an answer to the question of what is the best medicine for a given person so that the treatment can be as effective as possible. With the help of markers, that refer to the changes we read in the DNA material, we can, with a certain probability, say that a person has a chance of developing certain disease and so in order we prevent it from occurring.

The Vice President of BGI Group Terence Xiong emphasized that he supports the Serbian national strategy for the development of biotechnology and the IT industry, and confirmed that they are considering the possibility of being the first company in the future BIO4 campus in Serbia, increasing their capacities in Serbia, opening new laboratories and expanding the existing ones. Source: Website of the Government of the Republic of Serbia