Entering Room 927, Building C, Gongfang Times, located in Lanyuan Road, Huayuan Industrial Zone, Tianjin Sunde Medicine Technology Co., Ltd. A national high-tech enterprise in Tianjin Binhai High-tech Industrial Park. On the wall of the corporate honor room, 18 patents authorized by the company and Nankai University are in sight. Twelve years ago, two returnee doctors Wang Peng and Chen Yue founded this company. Today, in addition to the parent company located in Tianjin, there are 7 subsidiaries. Chen Yue looked at the scientific research results in front of him, feeling full of emotions, and time seemed to have returned to when he had just returned to China...

What foreign countries can do well, Chinese can also do well

      In 1997, Chen Yue, who graduated with a pharmacy major, went to study abroad. After obtaining a doctorate in pharmacy in the United States, he entered a world-renowned bioscience company to engage in drug research and development. His annual salary was more than US$100,000, which was a good-paying job at the time.

      In 2007, Chen Yue returned to China to participate in the international academic conference of pharmacy. At the meeting, he learned that the same anti-cancer drug has a profit margin of more than 100 times at home and abroad, and the patent protection period is required to imitate it, which greatly stimulated his mood to return to China.

    "Do you say that the production cost of that medicine is very expensive? It may cost a few hundred dollars for a course of treatment, but they will sell you tens of thousands. So I felt that China could not always wait for the introduction of patents. It must have its own patents. Innovation. I think what can be done abroad, we Chinese can also do well.” Chen Yue held the new drug developed by his team in his hand and firmly told reporters that this was the biggest motivation for him to return to China at that time.

      It was at that meeting that Chen Yue's speech caught the attention of Wang Peng, the first dean of the School of Pharmacy of Nankai University. At the meeting, Chen Yue expressed his willingness to return to China and make Wang Peng very happy. Wang Peng told Chen Yue that the door of Nankai University was open to him, and he was welcome to return to China for scientific research.

      In July 2007, Chen Yue resigned from the company in the United States and came to Nankai University in October 2007. After a short period of preparation and running-in, in January 2008, Chen Yue officially started his coaching career in Nankai. And his research direction is the medicinal chemistry of cancer stem cells, a research topic completely different from his research in the United States, opening a new scientific research journey.

Break down technical barriers to achieve localization

      The road to scientific research has never been smooth sailing. Chen Yue wants to localize the anti-cancer drugs he developed. In addition to solving the problem of technical patents, the research and development urgently needs imported ingredients and raw materials, but also encounters foreign technical barriers. "In 2009, we went to find parthenolactones that could be purchased in large quantities. The cheapest one was from an Israeli company. It cost 180,000 US dollars a kilogram, which was simply not affordable. What we have to do is to produce Affordable anti-cancer drugs, if the cost is so high, then our research and development will lose its meaning and original intention." At this point, Chen Yue's tone was a little solemn.

      The immediate difficulties did not discourage Chen Yue and his colleagues. In order to break the technical barriers set up by multinational companies, Chen Yue and his team investigated ancient Chinese medicine prescriptions and the Compendium of Materia Medica, and found that a single component of the root of Magnolia candidum can inhibit the development of brain tumors.

    "This plant is unique to our country, and the output is very high in Henan and other places. And the effective ingredients extracted from this plant can reach 6%, which is much higher than the 0.1% extracted from the previous foreign raw materials." This makes Chen Yue He and his team were very excited. More importantly, the local magnolia plantation usually sells the tree to the urban area, and the roots are generally not needed. Local farmers mostly use it for firewood, which has no other value. But this is crucial to Chen Yue's research and development. As a result, Chen Yue purchased these magnolia roots at high prices to truly turn waste into treasure, and to a certain extent promoted the economic income of local farmers.

      Speaking of this unexpected discovery, Chen Yue always couldn't conceal his inner joy. He always attributed it to his own luck. However, behind this "lucky", how much he paid may only he knows. The technical barriers to raw materials were broken, and a new anti-cancer drug that was extracted and synthesized was born, and it was all localized. This drug has a selective killing effect on cancer stem cells. And its cost is more than 100 times lower than that of imported similar products. Chen Yue happily told reporters: "The production cost has been reduced, which means that this is a medicine that ordinary people can afford. One gram is 10 yuan."

What we want to do is Creat in China

      How to deal with glial tumors has always been a medical problem in the world. After 8 years of research, Chen Yue and his team have finally successfully developed an anti-brain cancer drug with completely independent intellectual property rights, and for the first time domestically produced western medicine has been used in Western countries for clinical applications. . The anti-cancer drug ACT001 that he led research and development was approved to conduct clinical trials in Australia to treat glioma. This is the first time that Tianjin has independent intellectual property rights and needs to enter the clinical medical field of a developed country. This project has also been included in the National Twelfth Five-Year Plan for New Drug Development and the Tianjin Anti-Cancer Major Plan, and has received key support. At the same time, it has also obtained orphan drug qualifications from the United States and the European Union, which is the first case in Tianjin. It is also one of the top eight Chinese independent research and development products to obtain orphan drug qualifications in Europe and the United States. Clinical trials in Europe and the United States will enjoy a package of support policies from the European and American Drug Administration.

      Chen Yue said: "Scientific research results are only the first step, and how to quickly industrialize scientific research results is the second step we need to do."

      In order to quickly industrialize this scientific and technological achievement, Chen Yue registered and established Tianjin Suntech Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd., adopting the mature industry-university-research mechanism of the United States, and actively connecting with the capital market for financing. Now Chen Yue and his team have obtained 7 Chinese patents and a number of overseas patent authorizations from Russia, South Korea, the United States, the European Union, and Japan, realizing the dream of drugs developed and produced in China to the world.

    "What I am doing is not imitating and following others, but a completely innovative research and development, not only Made in China, but also Creat in China. After the drug is launched in the future, I hope it can reward our country and our society. "Chen Yue said.

Difficulty in financing used to be an obstacle

      For more than ten years, Chen Yue’s team has been focusing on the development of original innovative drugs. Among them, a new anti-cancer drug for glioblastoma, a highly malignant tumor. ACT001 has successfully entered clinical trials in Australia. Obtaining orphan drug status in the United States and the European Union is expected to provide new treatments for this worldwide medical problem.

      Although it seems to be progressing smoothly now, it is well known that the development of new drugs often takes a long period of time and bears a great risk of failure. Financing difficulties were also Chen Yue’s heart disease: "When I was most difficult, I mortgaged my only house to the company. In other words, if I really failed, I might go bankrupt and owe a huge debt. ."

      Chen Yue said: "Our financing has gone through two stages, the first stage is angel investment. Before 2013, the company had raised 5 million yuan from several individual investors, but as the company grows, we need to do more. One step forward. Later we started financing from professional institutions. But because there is no collateral and the risks are high, it is difficult to obtain loans through traditional financial institutions."

      Until 2013, Chen Yue came into contact with the regional equity market in Tianjin, where through the services of the capital market, a large number of investment and financing institutions were attracted and gathered, including banks, trusts, securities, and Small loans, factoring, leasing...Through the aggregation of these institutions and resources, enterprises can connect with each other in selection.

      The equity market has opened a new door for Suntech Pharmaceutical. They were listed on this platform in 2013, and the total social financing in the past few years has reached 100 million yuan, providing a strong guarantee for clinical trials of new drugs at home and abroad. "It has a great advantage, that is, there is a third-party supervision platform, so that all the company's financial management is very formal, with sufficient information disclosure, everyone can also trade on this platform, so that we can It’s easy to attract shareholders. So every time we issue additional issuances, we rush out and we often don’t have enough.” Chen Yue said.

      In addition, due to excellent technology, Chen Yue’s project has been supported by the special funds of the Tianjin Science and Technology Bureau’s Anti-Cancer Major Program and the Science and Technology Support Program. The support of sending charcoal in snow has strengthened our confidence in research and development."

      With the progress of scientific research and the continuous development of the company, the drugs developed by Chen Yue have obtained a number of international clinical trial qualifications. Some financing institutions have come to negotiate with them after learning of their independent research and development technology. Talking about these changes, Chen Yue insisted, “In order to achieve substantial development, the independent research and development capabilities of enterprises must not be ignored, because our own technology will never be controlled by others. This is our confidence and dignity.”

      At the same time, Chen Yue also wants to call on investment institutions to give more attention and confidence to industries or projects with long input and output cycles.

      Chen Yue introduced to reporters that the company is currently undergoing three clinical trials and is still applying for the second phase of clinical trials for other cancers and autoimmune diseases. There is still a need for further financing. But they are full of confidence in the future. Chen Yue revealed that the company plans to start the listing of the Science and Technology Innovation Board or the Hong Kong Medical Board within two years. To achieve the goal of achieving sales revenue of more than 1 billion yuan and profits of more than 300 million yuan in five years after the first new drug was launched on the market within three years. With the gradual transformation of the company's new drug research and development results, the company will strive to achieve the long-term goal of over 10 billion in sales revenue, over 3 billion in profit, and over 100 billion in market value within 10 years.