On February 25, the first stop of the 2022 "Together with You" series of study tour activities initiated by the Alumni Relations  Office of CEIBS Beijing Campus, "Decrypting Pharmaceutical R & D Enterprises - Entering Leadingpharm Pharmaceutical Technology", was successfully held in Beijing. Over 20 Chinese alumni of CEIBS EMBA from different industries gathered in Beijing Research Institute of Leadingpharm to have a deep understanding of pharmaceutical CXO R & D enterprises durig a relaxed and pleasant visit. Jointly explore the development trend of the industry, gain insight into business opportunities and meet like-minded alumni. Mr. Wallace Tao, Chairman of Leadingpharm, and Ms. Julie Gao, President of Leadingpharm, received visitors warmly as alumni of CEIBS.

As an extension of CEIBS, Mr. Wallace Tao, Chairman of Leadingpharm, as well as a member of CEIBS EMBA Alumni, made a speech with the theme of "Open the All-round Reconstruction of the Underlying Logic of Pharmaceutical Innovation with the Help of CXO", using the capital language generally understood by alumni of CEIBS, vividly and clearly expounded the current situation and prospect of the pharmaceutical industry, interpreted the essence and logic of different types of pharmaceutical enterprises, and further refined pharmaceutical investment opportunities.

Chairman Tao firstly introduced the current situation of 18A Biomedical Companies: until December 31, 2021, among the 19 unprofitable biotechnology companies listed in Hong Kong in 2021, 15 were still in the breaking state, of which 9 closed down on the first day of listing. According to the data of Ifind, among the 31 Tier 1 Industry of SWS Index, the decline of pharmaceutical biology in the past year (from January 28, 2021 to January 28, 2022) ranked the second, with 23.21%. From the valuation level, as of the closing on January 28, the P/E(TTM) of the pharmaceutical and biological sector was about 28.5 times, which has fallen back to the middle and lower level in the past decade. Investing in biological innovative drugs is risky and uncontrollable.

At present, the R & D efficiency of new drugs in the world also continues to decline. The average R & D cost of each innovative drug continues to rise from $1.327 billion in 2013 to $2.442 billion in 2020. The internal rate of return (IRR) of late stage clinical pipeline projects has fallen all the way to about 2%.

However, compared with the iterative innovation of traditional industries, the innovation of the biological new drug industry is distributed innovation (there are still new contents that can be found in the existing innovation points), which can not be monopolized and has more possibilities. Based on this feature, the United States adheres to “Fail Early, Die Early” to keep the whole innovative drug industry chain running smoothly. The higher investment costs in China coupled with the “Delay Risk Model”, which lead to the loss of the whole industry, is the biggest structural obstacle to China's biological innovative drug industry.

Chairman Wallace mentioned that the fundamental logic of biotech is "low-cost trial and error" and "give it to Pharm after POC". In the practice of entrepreneurship and investment of biotech in China, it runs in the opposite direction. Delay Risk and Die Late have become the principles of practical implementation. Therefore, at present, China's biotech urgently needs to reshape the market logic, break the rigid rise mode of each round of valuation, realize the effective allocation of resources and improve the efficiency of the industry. In this process, CXO companies will help biotech scientists make better decisions and achieve efficient operation, and complete the commercial transformation of innovative achievements as soon as possible by the CXO advantages of low cost, high efficiency and specialization.

In order to go deep into the front line of pharmaceutical R & D and feel the atmosphere and environment of research, commentators of Leadingpharm led the alumni to visit the laboratory of the pharmaceutical R & D section of the company, and introduced the pharmaceutical R & D process, instruments, equipment and enterprise management in detail.

The visit and exchange of alumni of CEIBS into Leadingpharm not only promoted the sublimation of emotion between alumni, but also promoted the in-depth dialogue and cognition between Leadingpharm and elites in various industries, laying a solid foundation for further cooperation in the future. This series activities will be continued, and we look forward to it!

The event was presided over by the President of Leadingpharm, Ms. Julie Gao.

Special Thanks: thanks to CEIBS for providing this alumni exchange platform, and thanks to the teachers of the of CEIBS Beijing Campus for their careful planning and organization.

About CEIBS

China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) was co-founded by the Chinese government and European Union (EU) in 1994, with Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the EFMD serving as its executive partners. CEIBS has campuses in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Accra in Ghana, and Zurich in Switzerland.

As China’s only business school to originate from government-level collaboration, CEIBS is committed to educating responsible leaders versed in ‘China Depth, Global Breadth’ in line with its motto of ‘Conscientiousness, Innovation and Excellence’. Leaders from the Chinese central government and the EU, respectively, have lauded CEIBS as “a cradle of excellent executives” and “a role model of EU-China co-operation”.
 

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