Chinese innovation enhances biopharma sector

The emphasis on innovation in China will give rise to a new wave of achievements in the industry, they said.

Wei Dong, CEO of EdiGene, a Beijing-based biotech company developing genome-editing technologies, said the biopharma and pharmaceutical industry in China is growing rapidly.

Since 2015, the industry has been elevating its focus from generics to innovation and developing from "me-too" and "me-better" to "first-in-class", grasping the latest trends like the cell and gene therapy, a global hot spot in the industry, he said.

On the one hand, Chinese biotech and biopharma firms focusing on small-molecule therapeutics and/or macromolecular therapeutics are further improving their R&D capabilities and have first-in-class potentials in their pipelines, especially among early-stage programs.

On the other hand, in the field of cell and gene therapy, companies like EdiGene have accumulated enough expertise and experience to translate innovative technologies into transformative therapies.

Jiangsu Recbio Technology Co Ltd, an innovative vaccine company founded in 2012 in Taizhou, Jiangsu province, is among the very few enterprises in the world that can develop novel adjuvants to US Food and Drug Administration standards. An adjuvant is an ingredient used in some vaccines that helps create a stronger immune response.

Recbio's rich vaccine portfolio includes vaccine candidates for HPV (human papillomavirus), shingles, influenza and adults' tuberculosis. Now, it also has a novel adjuvant recombinant COVID-19 vaccine undergoing phase-2/3 clinical trials.

Clinical studies have shown the vaccine candidate's immunogenicity－it is a term that denotes a substance's ability to produce an immune response－is at least comparable to Moderna/Pfizer's mRNA vaccine, and it can induce high levels of neutralizing antibodies against the Delta, Omicron and other COVID-19 variants, said Liu Yong, founder and chairman of Recbio.

Another COVID-19 vaccine Recbio is developing is the world's first lyophilized mRNA vaccine, which can be stored and transported in conventional cold-chain conditions. If this vaccine receives regulatory approvals, it is expected to greatly improve the accessibility of mRNA vaccines.

The vaccine candidate has induced a high-level neutralization response against both the wild-type and the Omicron strains in mice experiments.

"Thanks to supportive government policies, the R&D, production and commercialization of the domestic pharmaceutical industry have been undergoing remarkable positive evolution," Liu said.

"Policy measures that attract high-end talent from overseas, encourage high-tech enterprises to grow and increase financing channels for enterprises, have all provided strong support for companies in the sector, apart from reinforcing the healthy economic fundamentals and growing demand in the health market," he said.

According to Le Deu with McKinsey, the Chinese biopharmaceutical industry's innovation focus has broadened significantly into all major modalities and disease areas.

For nine out of 10 modalities and for nine out of 13 disease areas, Chinese companies are now leading multinational companies in innovation in China's domestic market.

Citing from Global Oncology Trends 2021: Outlook to 2025, a report by health information consultancy IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, he blogged that China-headquartered companies are developing 18 percent of all early-stage oncology drugs, up from 6 percent in 2015.