GHDDI explores new model for drug discovery
- By Zhang Liying
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E-mail China.org.cn, February 26, 2019
The Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (GHDDI), an international non-profit research and development center, is committed to exploring a new model for drug discoveries by integrating global resources with China's advantages, according to a presentation given to a media seminar in Beijing last Friday.
The institute, jointly founded by Beijing's Tsinghua University, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Beijing Municipal Government, was unveiled last November in Zhongguancun, a technology hub in the Chinese capital.
The current model, involving huge investment, long cycles and a high failure rate, inevitably pushes drug prices to the heights, taking a heavy toll on the finances of both governments and individual patients, particularly those in developing countries, said Ding Sheng, director of the GHDDI.
Ding, also director of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Tsinghua University, said it takes on average 14 years of hard work and an investment of $2 billion to get a new drug from the laboratory onto pharmacy shelves, and the failure rate is more than 95 percent.
Therefore, a more sustainable drug discovery model is needed to strengthen disease control and meet people's growing aspirations to have a better quality of life, he said.
Li Yinuo, director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's China Country Office, said the organization is funding the institute out of a desire to combine global cutting-edge technologies with China's innovation advantages in an effort to lower the disproportionately high market failure rate.
Statistics show that infectious diseases still account for more than a quarter of all illnesses occurring around the world. However, global investment in R&D and manufacturing of medical products for these diseases accounts for only 10 percent of the total, Li said.
Ding explained that the GHDDI is designed to be an engine, disseminator and beacon for innovative and sustainable drug discoveries. "We will make good use of China's R&D capacity and innovation environment to create a diversified pipeline that delivers drug candidates and develop effective and affordable drugs to address major global health concerns."
"We will also try to push back the frontiers of medical science and cultivate top talents, hoping to export these forces driving innovation to help other institutes conduct their projects and, in turn, boost biomedical innovation worldwide," he added.
As to China's advantages, Ding said both the country's innovation capacity and investment in medical innovation have been increasing, pointing to more than 7,000 bioscience companies and about 300 related parks (incubators) in China, with over 1 million R&D personnel, 30 percent of whom are overseas-educated scholars.
In China, the equity investment in medical industry grew by an annual average 89 percent between 2010 and 2016, and venture capital investment in healthcare doubled in 2017 over the previous year, Ding said.
A press release from the GHDDI said the institute has already established drug discovery laboratories with a total area of around 6,000 square meters and carried out more than 10 projects targeting serious global concerns, such as tuberculosis and malaria.
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