People have always expected that sufficient detection reagents can make potential viruses in the body have nowhere to hide, finding effective drugs can help patients regain their health, and quickly develop effective vaccines to build a barrier to protect the human body... As Nobel said, "The progress of scientific research and its growing fields will arouse our hope." On the road to preventing and controlling the new pneumonia epidemic, similarly, the progress of scientific research is conveying the hope of defeating the virus to mankind.
In another space that ordinary people are not familiar with, the battle for human health between scientific researchers and viruses has been in full swing. Among them, many entrepreneurs with distinct scientific research genes are racing against time to exert their scientific research expertise and technical strength in the backbone of epidemic prevention and control, from a medical laboratory with strict protection to a drug supply chain that is constantly being supplied day and night. They either track the traces of the virus or calculate the data of the drug, spend all day and night, use up scientific research resources, and launch all production lines just to ultimately control the epidemic.
In this epidemic, dozens of member companies in the medical and health field of Sequoia China have directly invested in this life-saving operation, from drug research and development, CT image diagnosis, epidemic prevention education, protective clothing and mask production to medical distribution and hospital construction, fighting on the front line of fighting against the virus.
To more comprehensively demonstrate the entrepreneurial spirit of Sequoia family member companies under the epidemic, this article interviews 7 companies fighting on the medical and health front. Whether it is BGI mobilizing the whole group to quickly complete the production of 800,000 virus testing kits, or Beida Pharmaceutical to overcome all difficulties in the epidemic to ensure that life-saving drugs for patients with advanced lung cancer are not stopped and supplied, they have lived up to expectations and mission in extraordinary times, showing the outside world the confidence to win the war on virus prevention and control by relying on technological breakthroughs, and also showing the collective wisdom and responsibility of entrepreneurs in the medical and health field.
is on the front line of the fight against the epidemic, and race against time
Time is life. On the front line of epidemic prevention and control, every company that is struggling to fight is racing against time, just to analyze and detect viruses more deeply, deliver urgently needed drugs more quickly, and produce diagnostic reagents more quickly.
Because seeing the struggle of member companies under the epidemic, Lu Xiaobo, partner of Sequoia Capital China Fund, believes that with everyone's joint efforts, this epidemic will definitely pass as soon as possible. "Seeing so many medical entrepreneurs invested by Sequoia Capital are unshirkable to rush to the front line and make their own contributions to the fight against the epidemic from all aspects. On the one hand, I feel deeply admired and moved, and at the same time I strengthen our continued support for these outstanding entrepreneurs with innovation ability and responsibility!"
was moved by these companies' responsibility to move forward with the burden. Gu Cuiping, managing director of Sequoia Capital China Fund, said, "As investors, we hope to support more companies to invest in epidemic prevention and control, popularization of testing methods, new treatment methods and vaccine development."
BG: Build the "Fire Eye" laboratory in 5 days, inspecting 10,000 virus samples per day
BGI has many years of experience in participating in the global public health incident of sexually transmitted infections. In this battle against the epidemic, BGI has also become the first batch of the only designated third-party testing institutions of the National Health Commission. On January 26, the two product series of BGI and BGI Intelligent Manufacturing companies - BGI 2019-nCov nucleic acid detection kit (fluorescent PCR method), the 2019-nCov nucleic acid detection kit (combined probe anchoring polymerization sequencing method), analysis software, and DNBSEQ-T7 sequencing system passed the emergency approval procedure of the National Medical Products Administration, becoming the first batch of testing products to fight the epidemic that have been officially approved for the market.
In order to alleviate the epidemic prevention and control pressure caused by the shortage of kits, Huada quickly organized the production of kits and quickly completed a multiple-order growth of production capacity.As of February 10, BGI has completed the production of more than 800,000 new coronavirus testing kits, which has greatly alleviated the supply pressure of the kit. At the same time, it has reserved more than 300,000 kits of raw materials, and its daily production capacity has reached 100,000 people per day.
At the same time, BGI was the first in the industry to carry out the donation of novel coronavirus kits to Wuhan, Hubei and other regions across the country, and received active response and participation from many third-party caring institutions. As of February 10, BGI was divided into two batches. On the basis of the actual donation of 25,600 kits to Wuhan and Hubei in the early stage, 43,200 kits were added, and all of them have been distributed. Third-party caring institutions donated a total of 135,500 kits to various places through purchasing charity from BGI.
In addition, BGI took only 5 days to participate in the construction of the "Fire Eye" laboratory in Wuhan that can detect virus samples from 10,000 people every day, effectively improving the detection capabilities of Wuhan and surrounding cities. The total area of the core experimental area of Wuhan's "Fire Eye" laboratory is 1,000 square meters, and is run by BGI. It operates at high speed with hundreds of BGI employees working 24 hours a day. In addition to the automated extraction of nucleic acids, its detection capacity has reached 10,000 servings per day. On February 10 alone, nearly 3,000 samples were collected.
In the current epidemic situation, BGI employees have been working hard for days and overtime on various fronts such as scientific research and production since the Spring Festival, creating dawn for the victory in fighting the epidemic.
Small medicine: clear the "capillaries" supplied by Wuhan drugs
"Not the busiest, only busier" is a true portrayal of the small medicine for fighting the epidemic.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, as China's No. 1 pharmaceutical B2B Internet technology company, Xiaoyao, which is located in the Wuhan epidemic area, immediately launched the company's emergency work. Through the nationwide medical supply chain, warehousing and logistics system and drug big data platform, materials should be allocated from national and international channels to Wuhan as much as possible to increase inventory to deal with the epidemic.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Xiaoyaoyao is the first batch of enterprises to provide epidemic prevention materials to China Construction Third Bureau, which undertakes the construction of Huoshenshan Hospital.
small medicines have successively provided multiple batches of epidemic prevention materials to Huoshenshan Hospital, Wuhan Optical Valley, Zhengzhou Airport Port District and other units and hospitals, and have been selected as the emergency material procurement and reserve enterprise of the Material Support Group of the "Hubei Province New Coronavirus Pneumonia Epidemic Prevention and Control Command" and is also the only Internet pharmaceutical company selected.
In addition to providing materials to hospitals and other units, Xiaoyaoyao publicly promises to "not control sales and no price increase" and "not close during the Spring Festival, ensuring the supply of drugs, ensuring the stability of prices, and ensuring service quality". The company set up a targeted civilian epidemic prevention mask for ordinary people in Hubei, and provides them to the general public steadily every day.
As a startup company headquartered in Wuhan, most of Xiaoyaoyao’s customers are small and medium-sized pharmacies and clinics. Only when Xiaoyaoyao ensures that the supply does not increase prices can they provide consumers with affordable epidemic prevention supplies. This is also in line with the original intention and mission of Xiaoyaoyao, allowing ordinary people to take cheap and safe medicines.
"Come on, we will win the fight against the epidemic!" This is the closing sentence that the members of the Xiaoyao team like to use when responding to external concerns. After this battle, they will always be grateful to those who aid Hubei and support Wuhan.
Innot: 24 hours a day, diagnostic reagents are directly supplied to Hubei
Faced with the severe situation of the national epidemic, Innot quickly summoned more than 30 employees on January 27 (the third day of the Chinese New Year), opened 2 artificial production lines and an automated production line, and made every effort to speed up the production of respiratory virus five-unit card in vitro differential diagnostic reagents, racing against time, and helping the front line to fight the epidemic.
At present, nine hospitals in Hubei have used this product. The average daily use of Jinyintan Hospital with large dosage reaches 300 people, the average daily use of Wuhan Children's Hospital is more than 120 people, and the average daily use of Union Hospital is 70 people. In order to fully ensure the supply of front-line demand, Innot worked overtime, with a daily daily production of 40,000 to 60,000 pieces. All products were shipped to Wuhan, Hubei and all over the country for early differentiation and diagnosis of the new coronavirus, and made every effort to help win the battle against the epidemic.
The influenza triple and whole blood five-unit cards we produce cover the pathogens that need to be differentially diagnosed for new coronavirus infection: influenza A, influenza B, mycoplasma pneumoniae, respiratory syncytial virus, etc., and are of great clinical value for screening and differential diagnosis. This product is simple and fast to operate, can effectively eliminate relevant pathogens, and more accurately targeted anti-infection treatment and reasonable prognosis judgment. At the same time, it effectively avoids cross-infection among people, and realizes rapid screening of emergency patients and differential diagnosis of suspected patients.
——Innot CEO Zhang Xiujie
Use technological innovation to win the war without gunpowder
"The development of innovative technology and product technology helps everyone to deal with the challenges of viruses and various diseases faster and better." Yang Yunxia, managing director of Sequoia Capital China Fund, emphasized the value of rapid response of enterprises in the field of pharmaceutical innovation. And among these companies, a war without gunpowder is taking place, and the battlefield is the laboratory of medical R&D personnel.
WuXi Biologics: More than 240 scientists have researched on the research and development of virus neutralizing antibodies
After the outbreak, WuXi Biologics has mobilized more than 240 scientists to form a large-scale special technical team, and has worked closely with domestic and foreign companies to empower the development and production of multiple new coronavirus neutralizing antibodies to accurately block the epidemic.
In vitro efficacy trial data of these neutralizing antibodies is expected to be completed in March. The project is expected to complete the first batch of antibody samples within two months, supply preclinical toxicology tests and preliminary human clinical trials. It will be produced simultaneously in four production bases that the company has put into operation. The production scale will be rapidly expanded to 2,000 to 12,000 liters. The production volume of one batch of antibody drugs is expected to be available for up to 80,000 people.
Faced with the current severe epidemic challenges, WuXi Biologics responded quickly. All traditional development work that lasted 12 to 18 months is expected to be completed with high quality within 4 to 5 months, ensuring timely and effective epidemic intervention measures. WuXi Biologics has joined hands with many international and domestic biotechnology companies, hospitals and medical schools to fight the epidemic, fully implementing the mission of "empowering global partners and benefiting the vast number of patients". We look forward to us winning this battle against the epidemic as soon as possible.
——Dr. Chen Zhisheng, CEO of WuXi Biologics,
Jingtai Technology: Big data helps drug research and development, "outperforming the virus" as soon as possible
After the outbreak of the epidemic, Jingtai Technology quickly set up a research team to mobilize the huge computing power from the cloud to provide molecular-level research on the host mechanism of virus infection, and provide basic research and data open source support for virus early warning, prevention and treatment and drug development. At present, the R&D team is conducting a focus on activity analysis of high-concern drugs such as Remdesivir (GS-5734), and continues to complete alanine scan of the viral Spike protein, and comprehensively evaluate and predict the impact of viral mutation on its infectivity and pathogenicity.
Jingtai Technology has shared phased research results and calculation data with its peers, hoping to provide scientific reference and research foundation for vaccine research and development and clinical treatment, and accelerate the process of finding effective drugs. The company is also establishing information channels for cell-level experimental data with the experimental research team in Wuhan, and conducting animal experiments in cooperation to further confirm the therapeutic effects of small molecule single drugs and combination drugs.
Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is a beta coronavirus, as well as SARS and MERS, and there is currently no targeted treatment plan. While controlling the development of the epidemic, how to quickly understand the mechanism of viral infection and find effective therapeutic drugs as soon as possible is a race against time.We hope to use the strengths of Jingtai Technology to share a large amount of computing data and results we have completed, help accelerate the progress of experiments, and contribute to the early development of effective drugs for the new coronavirus.
——Wen Shuhao, co-founder and chairman of Jingtai Technology,
Yirui Bio: Rapid detection kit can speed up the investigation of the epidemic
Shenzhen Yirui Bio uses its advantages in immunochromatography technology to quickly respond to the investigation needs in the epidemic. It has successfully developed 4 new coronavirus antigen detection kits and antibody detection kits, which can obtain the test results in just 5-15 minutes.
Yirui Bio's antibody detection kit can collect fingertip blood for testing, greatly reducing the risk of operators infected with viruses through droplets during common pharyngeal swab collection. It is simple to operate and is suitable for large-scale population screening. The positive compliance rate of this kit with the current confirmed diagnosis using fluorescent PCR method was 83.56%, and the negative compliance rate was 92.19%.
As long as there is a need, we are willing to donate rapid testing test strips to key node departments and community service personnel such as government agencies, transportation departments, medical departments that need to be paid attention to, so as to help enterprises and institutions affected by the epidemic investigate the epidemic and resume work and production as soon as possible.
——Yirui Biological Deputy General Manager Yan Wenhao
play two games of "anti-epidemic" and "daily guarantee"
In addition to the medical research and development needs of front-line anti-epidemic, there are still countless other patients' needs to be guaranteed behind medical enterprises. How to actively participate in epidemic prevention and control work while ensuring their orderly operation and seeking welfare for the lives and health of other patients requires enterprises to balance and coordinate more intelligently.
Sequoia Capital China Fund Managing Director Cao Yibo said, "Sequoia China's member companies have leveraged their own advantages to support the fight against the epidemic. I hope they will also adjust their daily operations in response to the impact of the epidemic. This is to make equally important contributions to ensuring economic development while fighting the epidemic."
Beda Pharmaceutical: Start vaccine research and development, and do not forget to ensure that the life-saving drugs for advanced cancer are not interrupted
Recently, Beida Pharmaceutical launched the research and development and clinical research of the 2019-nCoV novel coronavirus universal DC vaccine, and worked with Beijing Dingcheng Peptide Source Biotechnology Co., Ltd., which specializes in the research and development of molecular targeted specific cellular immune vaccine treatment technology. Hangzhou Ruipu Gene Technology Co., Ltd., which specializes in the detection of precise genes and pathogenic microorganisms, domestic research institutes, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to jointly carry out research, so as to achieve the purpose of treating patients and inhibiting the spread of the 2019-nCoV virus.
Beida Pharmaceutical has joined hands with many domestic famous scientific research institutes, centers of disease control, innovative pharmaceutical companies and other professional institutions to give full play to the timeliness and technical advantages of the development of general DC vaccines, jointly carry out the research and development and clinical research of the 2019-nCoV novel coronavirus general DC vaccine, and strive to develop a special vaccine against the new coronavirus.
Beida Pharmaceutical must overcome difficulties and ensure that the life-saving medicines for many patients with advanced lung cancer do not interrupt or delay. In addition, in the clinical development of many DC vaccines, relatively few studies have been conducted on viral infection-related vaccines, and no reports have been seen in the development of DC cell vaccines with coronaviruses including 2019-nCoV. We hope to give full play to the advantages of Beida's own R&D, join forces with professional institutions to develop a therapeutic and preventive universal DC vaccine for the 2019-nCoV therapeutic, and contribute to winning this epidemic prevention and control battle.
——Ding Liming, Chairman and CEO of Beida Pharmaceutical,
The epidemic will eventually pass, and human beings will eventually become stronger in the battle against the virus. We see that from the discovery of cases to the isolation of viruses, the efficiency of scientific researchers in the face of this epidemic far exceeds the corresponding efficiency of Ebola and SARS outbreaks. Among them, the industry-university-research linkage mechanism built by research institutions, enterprises, capital and markets is accelerating the pace of pharmaceutical innovation and contributing to building a safer barrier to human health. Sequoia China, which has always been alongside innovative enterprises, will continue to support entrepreneurs in the medical and health field, hoping to seek welfare for the public's life and health through technological research and development and pharmaceutical innovation.
