Why Do Five Nobel Laureates Visit Guangzhou?
来源: 时间:2017-03-10
On March 7, 2017, Ren Xuefeng, deputy secretary of CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee and secretary of CPC Guangzhou Committee, met Jules A. Hoffmann, the winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, academician of the French Academy of Sciences and honorable director of Sino-French Hoffmann Institute, in Guangzhou.
On the same day, the US-listed pharmaceutical enterprise BeiGene settled down in Guangzhou Development District(GDD). The project will start construction within this year and have an investment amount up to 2.2 billion yuan ($330 million).
On November 7, 2016, Ren Xuefeng met Prof. David Baltimore, another winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, in Guangzhou.
On September 8, 2015, Global Bio-medicine Health Industry Development Roundtable was held in Guangzhou. George Fitzgerald Smoot III, Nobel laureate and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, attended the meeting. On November 18, 2015, the 3rd Canton Nucleic Acid Forum was held in Guangzhou. Three Nobel laureates Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Dr. Jack W.Szostak, Dr. Craig C.Mello and Dr. Thomas A.Steitz and other 10-odd scientists and entrepreneurs have concentrated in Guangzhou Science City to discuss the research hot spots and latest progress in the nucleic acid field.
Why did these five Nobel laureates visit Guangzhou within the short period of just more than a year and world-class bio-medicine enterprises also settle down in the city? Behind this is the important position of Guangzhou’s bio-medicine industry in the global bio-medicine arena, according to analysis of experts.
Guangzhou’s bio-medicine industry makes a sudden rise
It is said that BeiGene is the first Chinese innovative bio-medicine enterprise listed in the US. On the first day of its IPO, BeiGene had the total market value of hundreds of million USDs. Many experts deemed BeiGene as the Chinese Genentech to praise its outstanding innovation capability.
BeiGene (Hong Kong) Co.,Ltd., a fully-owned sub-company of BeiGene, signed a final agreement with GDD and GDD’s subordinate Guangzhou Get Sci-tech Development Co.,Ltd. to establish BeiGene Bio-medicine Co.,Ltd, and build a world-leading bio-medicine production base with commercial scale in Guangzhou.
BeiGene’s governmental affair director told the reporter that the main reason for choosing Guangzhou as the base was the existing bio-medicine cluster in the city.
Bio-medicine is “the jewel in the crown” in the new-round technical revolution. The incubation period of a bio-medicine enterprise is as long as five to ten years. And the R&D of a new drug costs hundreds of million yuan. Once the drug is put into operation, the sales amount often rockets based on 1 billion yuan. In fact, the explosive and soaring growth of Guangzhou’s medical industry is also based on long-term accumulation. Since 2003, Guangzhou has invested several billion yuan in the Guangzhou Island along the back course of the Pearl River to forge it into Guangzhou International Bio-Island.
Good news on Guangzhou bio-medicine cluster have been snowing in recent years. Several bio-medicine products with production value of above 100 million yuan have made critical breakthroughs, such as the artificial cornea of Guanhao Biotech, the first nucleic acid medicine of RiboBio and the gene sequencing and molecular diagnosis of Daan Gene etc. With the growth of the bio-medicine enterprises, in addition to the prospering Guangzhou International Bio-island, various bio-medicine parks are also booming.
It is learned that Guangzhou has been the home to eight bio-medicine parks and preliminarily built the R&D, pilot and incubation bases with Guangzhou International Enterprise Incubator, Returned Students Innovation Park and its Districts’ Enterprise Incubators as the core, the research fruit transformation and industrialization bases with Guangzhou Science City and Bio-island as the core area and the Districts’ Sci-tech Industrial Parks as the spread area. These featured parks jointly compose the network of Guangzhou’s bio-medicine industrialization bases.
It is learned that Guangzhou National Bio-industry Base(GNBB) focuses on driving the clustering development of bio-medicine industry, energetically introducing bio-medicine R&D and headquarters projects, and forging a world-level life and health industry’s technical innovation and service base. Representative enterprises including the listed Daan Gene, XPH, Improve Medical and Guanhao Biotech have been settling down in the base. The base is also home to a group of state high-level research centers, such as National Engineering Laboratory for Regenerative Medical Implantable Devices, National Medical Device Engineering and Technical Center, State-Local Joint Self-checking Instant Diagnosis Engineering Laboratory etc. It has set up major bio-medicine R&D platforms including CAS Guangzhou Institutes of Bio-medicine and Health and the South China Center for Innovative Pharmaceuticals. And 16 of Guangzhou’s 20 major bio-medicine enterprises are located in the Science City, showing an obvious clustering effect.
Data indicate that Guangzhou’s bio-medicine industry had a robust development in 2015. GDD alone is home to about 530 bio-medicine enterprises, including 8 with production value of above 1 billion yuan, 30 of above 100 million yuan and 17 listed enterprises.
According to the estimation, Guangzhou’s bio-medicine and health industry will hopefully reach the level of a trillion yuan by 2025. And the industry’s added value will account for 15% of Guangzhou’s economy and become the first pillar industry.
International Style assists medical industry to meet the Golden Era
Experts believe that Guangzhou enterprises’ strength in the bio-medicine field has generally kept in pace with world-leading ones in many aspects. This is due to Guangzhou’s foresight and charm to attract a group of Chinese bio-medicine elite abroad to start up business in the city.
In the new century, a group of overseas biologists returned back to China with world-leading bio-medicine technologies. Most of them took critical positions in world-leading pharmaceutical enterprises from the 1980s to the 1990s and mastered the cutting-edge technologies and international standard procedures. Due to the influence of Guangzhou Convention of Overseas Chinese Scholars in Science and Technology, quite a few persons set up their startup businesses in Guangzhou, especially in the Science City. In 2004, Zhang Biliang, expert in gene silencing, director and doctoral tutor of Molecular Medicine Department Institute of University of Massachusetts Medical School, returned back to China and founded the RiboBio Co. In the third year since the founding, RiboBio started making profit, said Zhang. Now, it has become the No. 1 brand and had 80% market share in domestic market. Once it succeeds in IPO, RiboBio will hopefully realize an annual sales amount of several billion yuan.
“My idea was simple when I planned to return. I just wanted to introduced foreign cutting-edge technologies to China and explore domestic market during innovation,” said Yang Jinwen, vice president of RiboBio. In 2011, RiboBio welcomed the arrival of Dr. Craig Cameron Mello, the Nobel laureate in 2006, and set up China’s first oligonucleotide cGMP line (i.e. nucleic acid medicine plant) which filled in the domestic vacancy in this field. Dr. Craig Cameron Mello was granted the 2015 Friendship Award by Chinese government.
Guanhao Biotech, the leading enterprise in domestic regenerative medicine material field, has spent over ten years in the independent R&D of “biotype hard meninges patch and industrialization of biotype patches”, which broke the monopoly of imported products in the market. Inside Guanhao Sci-tech Park, five ongoing projects also come from the world with the participation of academicians of CAS, CAE and the instruction of experts from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
“Guangzhou’s bio-medicine development is entering an exciting period. In bio-medicine research, China is undoubtedly involving into global collaboration. In Guangzhou, I saw a bio-medicine ‘corps’ which is sufficient to make greater-scale gene research on behalf of China concerning of its cutting-edge technical level and research fields,” said Dr. Craig Cameron Mello, the promoter of the precision medical treatment strategy initiated by former American president Obama.
At the Global Bio-medicine Health Industry Development Roundtable, Chris Lee, president of Medtronic Greater China, said, “Guangzhou’s preparatory strategy in bio-medicine may possibly lead Guangdong to meet the next technical revolution explosion period.”
Some expert predicted that China, relying on the bio-medicine technical revolution, may break the spell of no innovative medicine in the future. Guangzhou’s bio-medicine industry will possibly meet a golden era.
Government behind the rising industry
Lots of overseas bio-medicine Chinese elite swarm to Guangzhou for career development, which happens to have the same view with Guangzhou Municipal Government’s plan on developing emerging industries. Numerous preferential policies support bio-medicine enterprises to grow quickly.
“Biological and health industry, as one of Guangzhou’s strategic emerging industries, has enormous development potential and will become an important factor influencing the city’s future development. It has been the focus with support from Guangzhou municipal sci-tech planning and programs,” said Ma Zhengyong, director-general of Guangzhou Municipal Sci-tech Innovation Commission.
It is learned that, between 2013 and 2016, the highest proportion of biological and health industry in Guangzhou municipal sci-tech planned projects was 30.95%. In recent years, Guangzhou had invested over 500 million yuan from budgetary funds into biological and health industry.
Guangzhou has sped up the combination of sci-tech and finance and offered complete financial support services for biological and health enterprises. It also established seed funds and venture capitals for the industry to guide social resources into biological and health industry.
In recent years, Guangzhou has invested in a group of high-tech enterprises in biological and health industry through sci-tech venture capitals, sci-tech institution investment and other modes. The investigation to the industry’s 20 backbone enterprises indicates that 15 of them had received diverse investment of venture capitals. Sci-tech venture capital injected “source water” for the startups in their “seeding period”, alleviated their living pressure, assisted them to win capital from the market, and meanwhile received abundant returns. For instance, the 6 million yuan investment to Daan Gene Co., Ltd. of Sun Yat-sen University reached a market value of over 15 billion yuan, having over a hundred times increase of the state-owned asset.
Guangzhou established bio-medicine investment funds and special investment companies to efficiently integrate governmental investment resources. It established special support funds and incentive funds for capital injection and discounted loans to projects eligible for industrialization and major sci-tech achievement transformation. Meanwhile, it encourages existing venture capitals to strengthen the investment to bio-medicine enterprises, leverage the Small and Medium Enterprises Board to create conditions for IPOs of bio-medicine enterprises, and utilize the capital market to raise funds for development.
In addition, Guangzhou vigorously boosts the coordination and interaction of the links of the industrial chain from the upstream technologies to industrialization, and marketing etc., utilizes modern technical means to integrate sources and advanced management thoughts, and sets up a bio-medicine industrial system conforming to technical innovation characteristics and industrial development laws. In terms of collaborative innovation, Guangzhou integrates the local health and medical advantages in the scientific research, diagnosis, treatment services, initiates health and major medical collaborative innovation program and energetically boosts the collaborative innovation and achievements transformation in the field. Since 2014, according to the program, the municipal government has invested 100 million yuan budgetary funds in the collaborative innovation and achievements transformation for three consecutive years. It is a local major sci-tech program that is firstly started with the greatest support and the aim of clinic medical technology innovation, transformation and application in China. Guangzhou Bio-medicine Industrial Park also established the seed fund of 50 million yuan, the startup investment guide funds of 1 billion yuan and the financing guarantee funds of 300 million yuan to solve the problem of market malfunctions during the startup efforts.
Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou, Mar. 9, 2017
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