Expert Comments: High Speed Growth Of Technology Driven Enterprises, Huge Potential Market Demand In The Industry

At present, the development of biomedical industry is changing with each passing day, and there is no lack of the birth of new technology. And each new technology is likely to subvert the current understanding of the biomedical industry, and even change the habitual view of the past.

The pharmaceutical industry in Hong Kong and Macao is attracting more and more talents with its open policy. In view of this, the director of Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macao, who is the director of Guangdong Province, will soon be ahead of Guangdong Province in terms of social science development.

The gazelle enterprise hiploos is one of the typical representatives. The biological technology company hiploos, which focuses on tumor liquid biopsy, was born in Shenzhen in 2014. At present, hiploos has completed four and a half rounds of financing, and has obtained financial support from well-known investment institutions at home and abroad, such as Pangu venture capital, Softbank China, preferred capital, Shenzhen Venture Capital and Yifeng capital.

When hipoulos was just established, it obtained 10 million Angel round financing from Pangu venture capital. Why did you fall in love with hipoulos in the initial stage? Li lining, executive partner of life science division of Beijing Pangu Venture Capital Co., Ltd., told 21st century economic reporter, "Xu Mingyan and Chen Shifu of the founding team of hipoulos have strong academic background and technical reserves in library construction coding and data analysis, and have the ability to build technical barriers. At the same time, their innovative spirit and entrepreneurial enthusiasm infected us. "

Talking about the rapid development of hypoulos, Li lining said frankly that in addition to the continuous improvement and innovation of her team's ability, one of the main reasons is that, thanks to the huge potential market demand, NGS high-throughput sequencing technology has made continuous progress in early screening and post-treatment management. In the future, NGS related detection technology will bring more than 100 billion market scale in the field of cancer.

The night before the outbreak of the industry

It is undeniable that the rapid development of biomedical industry is accompanied by certain high risks, opportunities and challenges.

Li Youhuan told reporters that some enterprises in the industry have achieved R & D achievements, while some enterprises are in a state of chicken feather everywhere. "Some small and medium-sized enterprises spend money, but their products can not come out, or the products come out can not achieve the effect. A lot of funds have invested in biomedical companies in Silicon Valley, but they have lost money. "

The biggest risk of biomedical industry is that the R & D investment is too large, and only a small part can get the return. Most companies have closed down in the process of growth or before they are put into the market, Li said.

Secondly, disruptive technologies in the industry are faced with the problem of difficult market transformation. Its future marketization is inseparable from the support of clinical trials, which requires a large number of experimental samples and long-term investment.

In addition, the shortage of talents is also a dilemma. The whole world is scrambling for talents in the biomedical industry. Because there are a lot of people engaged in this industry, but few people succeed. Once successful, his products and talent team will be favored by all over the world.

Li Youhuan believes that the biomedical industry is in the eve of explosive and explosive development, but this eve period is full of difficulties and great pressure for many enterprises.

In this regard, Liu Ying, partner of Softbank China capital, said frankly, "new technologies in the biotechnology industry emerge in endlessly, so the investment in biotechnology itself contains risks. If we invest in industries with high technology and high barriers, there is bound to be the possibility of failure, but we accept this risk. You expect high returns, and you must be under high-risk pressure. "

In fact, Softbank's early investment in hiploos is based on its good cost performance. "At that time, hypoulos was not at the top of the list, but we saw that the team was more dynamic and the share structure was relatively good. We hope that they can be among the forefront of the industry in the follow-up development, and the subsequent development also confirms our idea at that time. " Liu Ying told reporters.

In 2018, Shenzhen Innovation Investment Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shenzhen Venture Capital") joined the financing queue of hiploos round B.

Zhang Hao, the investment director of Shenzhen Venture Capital, told reporters: "hipoulos is a technology driven company, and is optimistic about its accumulation in gene sequencing, especially in the field of ultra micro tumor liquid biopsy. Technology driven companies come from expert teams. Most of the postdoctoral and biomedical research teams are engaged in the whole field of biomedical research, and they need to have a professional team covering the whole field of genomics and biology. Therefore, not only in the clinical field of business growth, but also in the scientific research, pharmaceutical enterprises, big health and other service areas, HIPROS is also favored by many industry leaders. "

According to his introduction, more than 20 heavyweight articles have been published in domestic and foreign academic journals this year, with a total impact factor of more than 100 points. In addition, more than 10 papers are under review and many papers are to be submitted. At the same time, more than 50 conference papers have been published. At present, hiploos has reached business cooperation with more than ten domestic first-line new drug R & D enterprises such as Hengrui.

Zhang Hao also pointed out that technology driven companies are derived from prospective research. As early as 2015, HIPROS launched the "10000 people cancer gene sequencing program", which is China's first large-scale cancer "precision medicine" plan. In 2017, the company launched a large cohort study program of 100000 people each in "green lung", "Changkang" and "liver exploration". It has enriched the data of similar research groups in China, and accumulated earlier research experience for Chinese similar population. At present, the company has detected more than 100000 samples, with the largest tumor liquid sample database in China.

Contingency and necessity in the rapid development

To be sure, the biomedical industry has its high risks. But at the same time, the policy and market environment are good for the biomedical industry. Li Youhuan mentioned that many funds are supporting the development of biomedical enterprises. Industries need technology, capital, policies, talents and environment. In other words, all the elements of technological innovation and market environment are supporting the development of disruptive technology.

Up to now, hapros has gradually entered a good situation in the biomedical industry, and as a gazelle enterprise, it is also in the stage of rapid development.

Li lining told reporters that in November 2014, he began to contact the newly established hipoulos. At that time, after super Moore's law, the price of gene sequencing dropped rapidly and gradually entered the scope of commercialization in the clinical field. The unmet clinical needs of tumor diseases are huge, which promotes the rapid development of tumor targeted drugs, and the diagnosis and detection industry also develops rapidly.

However, PCR (polymerase chain reaction, a molecular biology technology used to amplify specific DNA fragments) and other concomitant diagnostic techniques are limited to limited changes in gene loci and tissue samples, which can not meet the clinical needs. NGS high-throughput sequencing can greatly improve the detection sensitivity and specificity of liquid samples, and can detect the mutation, fusion, insertion / deletion and copy number changes of complex sites at one time.

It is reported that ngs high-throughput sequencing is mainly divided into library construction, computer sequencing and data analysis. At that time, companies in the computer sequencing process basically used third-party technology platforms such as Illumina, which were almost the same, and were unable to build technical barriers. Some teams did not have the data analysis ability of the back-end. There is a certain academic background in this respect.

Liu Ying is not surprised by the rapid development of hapoulos and has high hopes for it. "Everyone in this industry is at a level of rapid growth. Hypoulos has thought a lot of ways and adopted a lot of strategies in terms of sales, which is inseparable from their steadiness. But I don't think it's fast enough for us to find ways to help investors. For the team at hapoulos, they should do better. " Liu Ying said.

In addition to the development of enterprises, for investors, post investment management is also an important aspect of investment. Talking about the post investment management of HIPROS, Liu Ying said that HIPROS is quite standardized in terms of financing and enterprise management.

Li lining said that with the changes of market environment and competitive situation, we should constantly think about how to shape the core strategic advantages through the adjustment of products and services. The corporate culture of start-up companies is still in the process of construction, and it is easy to meet challenges in the process of the integration of the founding team and the team with different genetic background.

In addition, the successful introduction of a new technology to the market or commercialization requires the relevant departments to continuously improve the supervision in terms of registration, approval and medical insurance, so as to improve the efficiency of social innovation. In this process, enterprises are relatively passive and unable to make accurate prediction, so they can only constantly remind themselves and their teams to make sufficient ideological preparation for the complexity of the mature process of innovative technology business scene.