Working together: Tsinghua University is at the heart of a joint venture between China, Taiwan and the United States. Credit: TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY

Political tensions might be high between Taiwan and mainland China, but that has not stopped some enterprising scientists from bridging the divide. One such entrepreneur is Jing Cheng, director of the new biochip research and development centre at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Cheng is developing ‘active’ electromagnetic biochips that can be used in bioassays. They are much faster and more sensitive than the ‘passive’ chips such as glass microarrays, he claims. In addition, Cheng says his biochips can use traditional salt buffers, giving them an advantage over their electronic counterparts which need special low-salt buffers.

Cheng was working at Nanogen, a US biochip venture company in San Diego, when he was lured back to Tsinghua to set up and head the biochip centre with more than US$4 million in support from the university and grants. But even as he moved back to China, Cheng was raising funds to set up a venture business on the west coast of the United States to develop his biochips (see Nature 399, 178; 1999).

The biggest investor in Aviva Biosciences, Cheng's new San Diego-based start-up, is the China Development Industrial Bank in Taiwan. The bank has contributed US$2 million of the $5 million raised to launch the company and is represented on its board.

To get his chips on the market, Cheng has forged an alliance between mainland China, Taiwan and the United States. Under the plan, Cheng's group at Tsinghua will progress discovery research, Aviva will develop the chips for market, and the chips will be made in Taiwan. The chips might also be manufactured on the Chinese mainland “at a later stage”, says Cheng. Tsinghua University will retain the rights for the licensed patents in the mainland, while Aviva will hold all the rights elsewhere.

Aviva president Julian Yuan, who comes from Taiwan, expects the first chips to be ready for market in about three years. Cheng says they are already doing their homework to find a suitable pharmaceutical or diagnostic company to form a partnership with when the chips are ready.

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