What is the frontier trend for new drug innovation? What is the weight of the frontier technology in industrial practice? How does the first-in-class make breakthrough?

The serial activities of 2021 ZGC Forum was unveiled yesterday afternoon. The first activity - ZGC Science City Life Technologies Innovation Forum was held in the Meeting Center of the Exhibition Center of ZGC National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone.

The forum is focused on the "new drug innovation in the first-in-class era". Nearly 20 scientists, entrepreneurs and investors in the field of life science and technology from home and abroad discussed about the way of new drug innovation, shared new drug research and development experience, attracting nearly 300 people from enterprises and the government and other industries. The online person times totaled over 4.1 million.

Frontier trend – new drug research and development ushered in golden times

At present, the Chinese new drug innovation has transformed from past imitative manufacturing and imitative innovation to first-in-class.

Next, how can we closely follow the new trend for global new drug innovation and accelerate research and development?

With the cross-integration of life science and technology with information, materials, engineering and other disciplines, the application of AI in the research and development of new drugs has attracted much attention up to now. The more thought-provoking issue is what the trend of the application of AI technology in the field of new drug research and development is, and whether it is going to replace the traditional research and development process.

"AI-based design of new drugs has both strong and weak points," said Huang Niu, a senior researcher of National Institute of Biological Sciences and TIMBR.

"In recent years, AI-driven new drug research and development has made great progress. The accumulated data is the key to AI-enabled new drug research and development. AI helps us find targets with its very powerful ability to generalize data. With enough data, AI can be a powerful tool for promotion of new drug research and development,” Said Huang Niu.

MRK, an international giant, has made outstanding achievements in the field of biological medicine. Merck’s new drugs have been introduced into China since 2012, with 34 new drugs introduced by the end of last year. "Bringing the latest innovative products from around the world to China in the first time is the greatest innovation," said Li Zhengqing, senior vice president of Merck Global and president of Merck Research and Development in China.

In the past few years, there has been an intense investment boom in the field of innovative drugs, and will the boom continue? According to Li Jing, Chairman and Founder of Yaodu Jingwei Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., drug research and development belongs to business science, and investment is an important part of the closed-loop biomedicine business. From the perspective of the maturity of the industrial chain, new drugs in China also have the ability to incubate efficiently. From the point of view of target selection strategy, China has gradually changed from following the fashion to rivaling foreign countries, and will enter a catching-up situation in the next ten years. In the next generation of new drug innovation, it is necessary to grasp the differentiated and diversified research direction.

As we all know, innovative drugs have the characteristics of high R&D risks, long cycles, and high investment costs. It takes 3-5 years to develop a generic drug, while it takes 10-15 years to develop a new drug. It can be seen that the research and development of new drugs requires a lot of investment. Without sufficient capital, it is difficult to guarantee the completion of R&D projects, and there will be heavy losses. Nowadays, driven by policy support and broad market demand, domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers have significantly improved the development of innovative drugs, the ecology of the innovative industry is continuously improving, and the development of new drugs is ushering in a golden age.

However, as Li Zhengqing said: "Drugs are produced for humans, not for profit. The invention of a new drug does not mean a big success, and we need to explore effective ways to benefit mankind with the best scientific research results. "

The invention of new drug is the early stage of drug development

As new drug innovation in China moves toward the "first-in-class" era, the significance of the link becomes more prominent.

In this forum, there are insights and analysis on innovation trends, and many representatives of outstanding new drug innovation companies share their practical experience in applying cutting-edge technologies to the industry. In the combination of biotechnology and computational science, sequencing is an important application direction. Currently, cell sequencing has entered the stage of single-cell sequencing. Wang Yangzhou, CEO of Beijing Analytical Biosciences Co., Ltd., has shared the company's industrial practice of "from disease single-cell atlas to disruptive treatment" on the forum to overcome the difficulties of cancer treatment based on single-cell scientific research. Wang Yangzhou has introduced that the current algorithm developed by the company realizes fast and reliable processing of single-cell data. Compared with similar international algorithms, it can greatly shorten the analysis time and seize the lead in scientific research. In addition, the various analysis algorithms developed by the company can solve many difficult problems in the field of single-cell biology, and help empower rare cancer cells and special gene therapy targets with clinical value. Immunotherapy is one of the current research and development hotspots. Vaxxit, a start-up company from Italy, has chosen the "rTAT-targeted recombinant HIV Tat immunotherapy" research and development idea. Giovanni Cozzone, Co-founder and CEO of the company, has introduced on the forum that the AIDS immunotherapy can greatly reduce the amount of proviral DNA in the blood, bringing the hope to the treatment of AIDS, and will greatly reduce the cost of treatment of AIDS. In cancer treatment, immunotherapy can be widely applied. Qi Feifei, Founder and CTO of Beijing Yimiao Shenzhou Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd., has shared the company's new progress in researching "CAR-T technology" on the forum. Qi Feifei has introduced that in CAR-T technology, T refers to immune T cells, which are responsible for removing "bad cells" in the human body, while CAR is a "weapon" that recognizes cancer cells and activates T cells. It's a technique that can completely remove cancer cells with a single treatment. After years of development, two drugs based on CAR-T technology have been approved for marketing abroad and successfully cured many cancer cases. The company has mastered the core technology of CAR-T preparation and is committed to the research of domestic CAR-T drugs. The company is registering clinical trials for the researched drug "IM19" and has obtained implied permission for multiple clinical trial applications.

BioFront, the original innovative drug incubation platform located in Zhongguancun Science City, attracts top drug R&D scientists from multinational pharmaceutical companies, Tsinghua University and other scientific research institutes, helping scientists to complete the transformation of innovation results "from 0 to 1".

How to find First-in-Class drugs?

Focusing on this topic, many investors and business representatives compare the development paths of new drugs at home and abroad, and discuss hot issues such as financing for pharmaceutical companies.

In terms of new drug innovation, the four elements that pharmaceutical companies are most concerned about are: supervision, capital, basic research, and payment system. "In the new drug innovation research and development system, basic research is very important. Basic research is the source of everything. However, currently our core resource is that there are many patients. How to make good use of the resource is our greatest advantage." Said Gao Wen, general manager of Beijing Medical Valley International Technology Development Co., Ltd.

Like Gao Wen, Zhu Ping, general manager of Zhongguancun Science City Innovation Development Co., Ltd., also believes that basic research is particularly important.

Basic research is the source of technological innovation. In the field of life science and technology, the basic research of life science and biotechnology not only breeds breakthroughs in new drug research and development, but also continuously updates the concept of drug research and creates new situations and new formats for the pharmaceutical industry. Driven by policies, technological development, and capital markets, new drug R&D has developed rapidly in China, the innovation ecosystem has undergone tremendous changes, and the number of new drugs on the market is on the rise. With the bonus support from the government, more and more outstanding talents have engaged in the new drug research and development. With the help of capital, new drug research and development has formed a circular system of benign development. However, more and more biopharmaceutical companies pay more attention to the construction of the payment system, because the construction of the system determines the ultimate fate of the industry.

When talking about the future market cycle of new drug research and development, the industry giants have unanimously given the deadline: in the next 10 years, innovative drugs are expected to account for 50% of the total domestic market in China.

"Four major conditions for innovative drugs in China have gradually matured." Shan Bei, Co-founder and CEO of BioFront, said in the speech. Similarly, in Zhu Ping’s view, “the regulation is becoming more and more enlightened, the system is becoming more and more active, and the prime time for first-in-class drugs has arrived.” This is the best time. The regulatory system continues to improve, capital is flooding in, scientific research talents are gathering in four directions, and the R&D channel is becoming more and more perfect... new drug innovation in China has entered the "first-in-class" era.