Recently, Jiangsu HengRui Medicine Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as HengRui Medicine), licensed its overseas exclusive R&D and selling rights of PD-1 monoclonal antibody project with independent intellectual property rights to US-based Incyte with $795 million, making itself the first Chinese company to transfer innovative biological drugs to foreign counterparts. The project, with its code name "SHR-1210",  is specifically used in tumor immunological therapy.

Sun Piaoyang, president of HengRui Medicine indicated that the partnership with Incyte will step up R&D of SHR-1210 worldwide. He believes that when the products come into market in future, it will offer better treatment measures for global cancer patients, further enhancing company brand recognition and accelerating internationalized course of innovative drugs.

It is said that HengRui engaged in R&D of PD-1 monoclonal antibody project in 2012. So far, it filed many patent applications at home and abroad involving SHR-2120. Industry experts pointed out that the company’s success demonstrated Chinese company’s innovative capability.  Domestic pharmaceutical companies should strengthen R&D especially in core domain. He  emphasized that only by constantly accumulating technologies and vigorously conducting global patent layout, can Chinese companies win bigger markets in global competition.

For the past few years, HengRui has endeavored to drive innovation through enhanced international cooperation, R&D and promotion of high-quality products, speeding up technological transformation and upgrading, and therefore gained competitiveness in the field of innovative biological drugs. A principal of HengRui told CIP News reporter, that the company has increased the spending on R&D which accounted for 8% of total sales revenue and constantly optimized product portfolios. As of now, HengRui has over 200 patent filings covering areas such as drug combination and its applications, drug preparation and usage, and slow release preparation of medicinal salt. Moreover, the company submitted 119 international patent applications under Patent Cooperation Treaty(PCT). In terms of development of innovative biological drugs, HengRui has maintained a healthy momentum which every year there are at least one innovative drugs entering the market.

"In recent years, domestic innovation-driven pharmaceutical companies represented by HengRui, Shandong GreenLeaf have successfully made a transition from being generic drugs-focused to being innovation-oriented which yielded satisfactory results," said Zhu Jingxi, legal manager of Nutrition and Health Research Institute under China Oil & Foodstuffs Corporation in an interview with CIP News. He added, as the pioneer company going out, HengRui manifested Chinese power due to its patent-first strategy when expanding foreign markets.  

(China IP News)