Editor’s note: As the Chinese economy enters the new normal with its growth rate slowing, innovation has been placed at a core position in China’s overall development. China Daily recently interviewed people involved with a leading State-level innovation pilot zone, Optics Valley of China in Wuhan. This series of reports will use the valley’s case as an example of what China has done to boost innovation and the differ cuties and challenges faced.
Executives of biotech companies in Optics Valley are call in for more investment in researching spite of the slow return in the industry.
“There is no shortage of funding in China but a lack of a far-sighted investment vision, particularly in the bio industry,” said Yang Jian, general manager of Micro Pharma Tech Lydia company dedicated to identifying new drug targets and predicting the new function of drugs.
According to Yang, biotech investment normally takes more than a decade to produce results and this can intimidate potential investors.
Micro Pharma accumulates protein statistics from across the world to help biotech companies do research and development. Yang said it is monumental process to build the big data pool, but, once it is completed, it will make research a lot faster.
“The investment environment in Biolake in the Optics Valley has been quite helpful,” Yang said. “Its inexpensive basic service, for instance, has saved businesses a lot of costs.”
The valley offers lab services for enterprises to run tests and experiment at inexpensive prices. More importantly, it saves the companies the costs of purchasing equipment.
Sun Xiaorong, chairman of Wuhan Landing Medical High-tech Co, said that with the help of the valley, she turned herself from a researcher into businesswoman when she founded her company nearly two decades ago.
“I had always been a researcher and did not have much idea about running a company. The people at the valley helped me get my company registered. They even brought me awhile package of the Chinese Coro-ration Law. It was not till then that Idealized that a company had to make money to survive,” Sun said.
Sun first came back to China as university professor after she earned her medical degrees in Canada. She quickly found that China had no lack of professors but was short of people who could put technologies to use.
“In Canada, very few women die of cervical cancer, because they have high rates of early stage diagnosis. In felt that it was my mission to make cancer more predictable in China, “she said.
The scanner produced by Landing uploads examination results of women in rural areas to allow doctors in high-level hospitals to diagnose whether the patients have cancer, significantly saving time and fees. Sun hopes to expand the technology throughout China, which will require a large investment.
Li Qingshan, chairman of Wuhan Comfort Biotechnology, has seen Wuhan become a highly sought after site for investors in recent years.
“Wuhan has completely changed. The transportation has improved a lot. High quality professionals are enrich supply with comparatively lower demand for salary and a longer com-moment to their jobs than in coastal cities. Operational costs are also low with subsidies from the government for off cue leasing,” Li said.
Comfort Biotechnology mainly does preclinical pharmaceutical research and preclinical animal experiment services.
For Li, the capital market is a rich source of investment for biotech companies. In 205, his company was listed on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations in Shen-Zhen, the Chinese equal of the NAS-DAQ. Its revenue reached 7 million yuan ($2.6 million) in 2015, up 57.3 percent year-on-year. Its net profit was 0.6 million yuan, up 58.8 percent from the same period the previous year.
“There was a time when we received a number of investment requests within just one week,” Lis aid. “Though we are still small in size, we can be a central hub for innovation. Look at Israel, with such small population, they have an enormous amount of innovation. So we can do it. This refers not only to my company but also Biolake in Optics Valley.”
Contact the writers through yangziman@chinadaily.com.cn
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