The 40th JPMorgan Annual Conference on health care (hereinafter referred to as "JPM conference") opened the online mode this week. The highlights of this year's conference combine the application and expansion of gene editing technology and mRNA biotechnology. The R & D Progress of Chinese enterprises has also attracted the attention of global investors, and Chinese innovation is accelerating to the world.
expansion of the application field of gene editing technology
In the field of gene editing, pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Bayer have announced important investment projects. Pfizer announced that the company has reached a four-year exclusive research cooperation with beam therapeutics, focusing on in vivo base editing projects for rare genetic diseases such as liver, muscle and central nervous system. The total value of potential cooperation projects is as high as US $1.35 billion.
Beam focuses on developing a new class of targeted drugs with "lipid nanoparticles" (LNP) base editing technology. This drug only targets a single base in the genome and will not cause double strand breaks in DNA. Compared with traditional gene editing methods, this method is more accurate and effective, and can reduce the potential risk of gene editing.
Gene editing technology is being applied to a wider range of disease treatment. Mikael dolsten, Pfizer's chief scientific officer, said: "we believe that the combination of mRNA and LNP technology has strong potential to solve the needs of patients. Covid-19 vaccine based on mRNA and LNP technology proves this. This is an exciting scientific frontier and has the opportunity to help patients with rare genes cure diseases."
Bayer Group also announced a cooperation with mammoth Biosciences with a total value of more than US $1.04 billion to develop in vivo gene editing therapy using mammoth's gene editing system CRISPR system. The system will be combined with Bayer's existing gene enhancement and induced pluripotent stem cell (IPSC) platform, which is expected to improve the life of patients with refractory diseases.
"The two cooperation announced by Pfizer and Bayer also represent the direction of biotechnology development in the future." Brad Loncar, founder of Loncar investments, a biological investment fund, told the first financial reporter, "in addition, more and more pharmaceutical companies begin to increase investment in RNA therapy, which is also a major investment trend in the future."
In addition to traditional pharmaceutical giants, mRNA biotechnology companies famous for covid-19 vaccine also continue to be the focus of this year's JPM conference. Biotech, a German biotechnology company, announced to cooperate with instadeep, a British AI company, to develop an effective "early warning system" to detect potentially dangerous covid-19 virus variants.
The two companies said that the test results show that this early warning system can detect 12 of the 13 coronavirus variants designated as potentially dangerous by the world health organization so far, and can reach a conclusion two months earlier than the WHO.
Dr. Ugur Sahin, co-founder and CEO of baintyco, said: "early labeling of potential high-risk variants may be an effective tool to remind researchers, vaccine developers, health authorities and policymakers, so as to provide more time to deal with new variants of concern.".
The great success of covid-19 vaccine has helped baintyco to invest more money in R & D. last year, the number of R & D personnel of baintyco increased by 40%, reaching more than 850 people.
Baintec predicted at the JPM conference that the covid-19 vaccine jointly developed with Pfizer may generate up to 17 billion euros in revenue in 2022, and promised to use the proceeds to develop anti-cancer drugs and new vaccines.
Baintyco said that the company started five clinical trials last year, including two experimental tumor drugs entering phase II clinical trials. The company is also conducting phase I human clinical trials of an influenza vaccine, and plans to start human trials of four candidate vaccines including herpes zoster, malaria, tuberculosis and herpes simplex this year.
Pfizer's rival Moderna also introduced the company's 2022 product development strategy at the JPM conference, which mainly includes vaccines for multiple antigens, including vaccines for the development of a universal respiratory disease, and potential global initiative vaccines for the development of latent viruses such as HIV. MRNA encoding protein therapy for cancer, cardiovascular, rare diseases, autoimmune diseases, And the second generation gene editing technology.
China's innovation goes global
The JPM conference also attracted a large number of Chinese biotechnology companies. According to the report of Baiji Shenzhou at the JPM conference, the company plans to promote 10 new molecules to the clinical development stage from 2022 to 2023, and is expected to promote 10 new molecules to the clinical development stage every year after 2024.
Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co.Ltd(688180) also announced with coherus Biosciences that it would expand its cooperation in the field of tumor immunity. Coherus has started the procedure of licensing the option of Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co.Ltd(688180) anti tigit monoclonal antibody in the United States and Canada, and will pay a down payment of US $35 million and a milestone payment of up to us $255 million to Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co.Ltd(688180) .
Zang Jingwu, founder and chairman of Tianjing biology, said in an exclusive interview with the first financial reporter: "overseas investors are very optimistic about the investment potential of Chinese biotechnology companies."
Zang Jingwu also disclosed to the first financial reporter that Tianjing biology has accelerated its dual listing plan on the main board of the stock exchange of Hong Kong and the science and Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. In the future, dual listing will provide the company's existing investors with more flexible trading options outside the Nasdaq market. At the same time, it will also provide the company with a new financing platform to attract more extensive and diversified investors.
When talking about the foreign technology licensing of Chinese biotechnology companies that have developed actively in the past few years, Zang Jingwu told China Business News: "with the improvement of China's innovation ability, the global authorized transfer of Chinese enterprises has developed very fast in the past two years. We expect that this year, including the next few years, the trend will be more obvious, and China's innovation will really go global."
He believes that tumor targeting will continue to be the hottest field of external authorization for Chinese biotechnology companies in the future. Zang Jingwu stressed that Chinese biotechnology companies should maintain flexibility in their transformation to commercialization in view of how enterprises develop from biotechnology companies with R & D capabilities to biopharma giants with commercialization capabilities.
He said: "innovative drugs do not have to be on the market before they can realize value. Especially for innovative drug enterprises, they need to have the ability to verify and realize value in stages. The cooperation with large companies also proves the value of these innovative drugs."
