Major pharma companies parade their top innovations at CIIE

A slew of the latest innovative therapies and medical technologies by world-leading companies are currently on show at the ongoing China International Import Expo in Shanghai, a demonstration of the enthusiasm that multinational enterprises have in helping Chinese patients with unmet medical needs gain access to cutting-edge medical solutions.

Among the exhibitors this year are Bristol Myers Squibb, which is showcasing more than 15 innovative medicines and products currently in the pipeline related to oncology, hematology and immunology.

The company's immune checkpoint LAG-3 Relatlimab, a cancer therapy, made its China debut at the CIIE. The therapy is the company's third checkpoint inhibitor following the PD-1 inhibitor and CTLA-4 inhibitor. Relatlimab has already been proven to be beneficial to patients.

Another major exhibit by the company is its world‘s first erythroid maturation agent called Luspatercept, which reduces patients' transfusion burden and is the first treatment advancement in myelodysplastic syndromes in more than a decade.

At the booth of US-based sequencing and array technology company Illumina, visitors will get to learn more about the company's prototype for its next-generation sequencing platform, the NovaSeq 6000.

The company said that the product will be embedded into its localization strategy.The company is also showcasing the NextSeq 2000, a gene sequencing platform that won the Red Dot Design Award this year. NextSeq 2000 is the first sequencer developed by Illumina that integrates library amplification, sequencing, and rapid genome analysis on a single platform.

Meanwhile, Medtronic is exhibiting more than 60 world-class medical technology innovations that cover a wide variety of fields such as heart and blood vessels, innovative surgery, smart medicine, nerve and spine surgery, digestion and liver, kidney health, and critical medicine.

The latest generation of Medtronic's interventional heart valve was also unveiled at this year's CIIE. The valve was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in August, and the CIIE marks the first time the device is being shown to the world.

Micra AV, an upgraded edition of the world's smallest leadless cardiac pacemaker, has also attracted wide attention during the expo. Medical experts have said that the device could benefit many Chinese patients suffering from bradycardia.

Zhang Shu, director of the arrhythmia branch of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association and a national political advisor, said that although pacemakers have been widely used in the world for more than half a century, its use in China is still significantly lower than in Western nations.

"In developed Western countries, 800 individuals per 1 million of the population use the device, roughly 10 times the figure in China," said Zhang, adding that disease education and promotion of innovative therapies are both important to the development of arrhythmia prevention and treatment.

Medical experts said the number of arrhythmia patients in China is estimated to be over 10 million, and the incidence of arrhythmia is expected to rise.

Zhang said that pacing therapy is the only effective treatment for bradycardia, and that innovative, leadless pacing devices help patients avoid problems such as complications during surgery, inconvenience to mobility and high postoperative infection risk that come with traditional pacing therapy.