Nobel Prize and China Biopharma Innovation’s Staying Power
You know Tis the season.
The anticipation, the high expectation, and finally,
the moment comes,
And the winner is…
Before diving into the winners, I read an article posted in Scientific American.
The article, published on July 17 comparing Nobel Prize-winning trends titled, Hidden Patterns shows Nobel Prize Science Trends. I like anything that has a pattern. Two authors Sarah Lewin Frasier and Jen Christiansen identified two interesting patterns.
First, it usually takes a Long time for a Nobel worthy technology to get recognized, and then hopefully rewarded.
For example, it took sixty years for meteorologist Syukuro Manabe to get recognized for his work conducted in the early 1960s, and only 60 years later get recognized for providing the fundamental works for computer models to interpret changing climate.
It may be an extreme example, but on average there was a 20-year gap between publishing a research and the time of being recognized. It indeed requires patience to prove that technology needs to satisfy curiosity and has a wide impact.
China’s Biopharma Innovation
Over the weekend, I listened to July’s Bioverse episode?recording?on biopharma business development trends. One of the speaking guests is Mr. Meng Bayi, a well-regarded voice in the Chinese biopharma industry who always offers his unique takes on Chinese and American biopharma innovation. Mr. Meng was commenting on the staying power of biopharma innovation in China.
According to Mr. Meng, the current surging biopharma innovation in China was a product of a special era, driven by a special group of people, and under special circumstances.
For one, around 2010, a large tide of overseas returnees to China, started their own companies (BeiGene, for one). For the first years, the time for innovation was not ready, and the regulators didn’t know how to review and approve new drugs, so they were initially struggling.
Then came 2015 when a reform-minded administrative official came to power, and everything changed. That’s the big moment and a milestone year.
Mr. Bi Jingquan became the head of the China Food and Drug Administration, and he initiated a series of reforms to clean up the eyesores of a regulatory system meant for generic drugs and active ingredients. On July 22nd, a storm shocked the clinical trials cycles.
Before that time, clinical data irregularities were running rampant, and it was hard for reviewers to differentiate the quality ones from the rest. The new crackdown on clinical data fabrication and forgeries forced drug study sponsors to bear consequences and take responsibility if they are found out for wrongdoing. The so-called “July 22nd Strom” quickly shook the Chinese pharma industry to its core – compliance with good clinical study practice (GXP).
Soon, many sponsors retreated their applications, but a few stayed behind with their new drug applications. The stress test, although harsh and seemed in a rush, quickly separated those who had been swimming naked.
领英推荐
Many returnees, like the surfers waiting patiently for the right moment to ride the big wave, captured the opportunity and propelled China’s biotech innovation, first, PD-1 inhibitor antibodies, later cell therapy, and now antibody-drug conjugates. The time made them and they pushed the time forward.
That’s what Mr. Meng referred to as “a special time and a special group of people, under special circumstances”, thus, Mr. Meng concluded that the China biotech is “hard to sustain”, and “out-license as much as you can”.
Dry Hay While The Sun Shines
?“Dry your hay while the sun still shines”, and sell as much as you can, the window is closing.
Whether China's biotech innovation is coincident or has a sustaining power, look no further than China’s Nobel Prize count and basic research situation.
As the Nobel Prize analysis suggests, patience is much needed for a researcher to get recognized.
Scientists with Nobel Prizes routinely sit on a bench for one decade after another for validation. They could have sought something else instead of waiting patiently for a reward that may not come.
China’s researchers have been taught to combine science with technology, while science requires patience, there is an easier way out, applying it to technologies.
Another important finding of the Nobel Prices-winning scientists is that researchers must collaborate across many scientific disciplines to understand, interpret, and analyze the increasing complexity of mechanisms. In other words, It’s harder for one man to discover a novel mechanism from the beginning to the end, a collaborative model is needed to make the discovery complete and possible.
Are Chinese scientists willing to wait for one or two decades sitting on the bench before their pioneer discovery is eventually recognized? Do Chinese researchers from different areas of expertise work together closely on the same project? Can China's advantages of speed and cost-effectiveness help or deter Chinese scientists awarded Nobel Prizes?
Answers to these key questions will determine whether China's innovation will be one-off or last for a short five years, eventually leading the world.
If you want to know the answer I interviewed well-known Dr. Lu Bai, one of the returnees who has done great work across academia and industry. Read the interview here:
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