Hapoulos: The Evolutionary Path Of DNA "Catcher" Of Precise Tumor

Editor's note: since November 17, the 21st century economic report has launched a series of special topics, "on high growth enterprises: discovering the sample of gazelle" in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area, and plans to launch ten consecutive issues. The series of reports were jointly planned and implemented by the headquarters of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao big bay district of China Central Radio and television, the center of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao big bay area and the southern finance and economics Omnimedia group.

This series of reports focuses on the high growth enterprises in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. Through in-depth first-line interviews and field research, we try to present the group stories of "Gazelle" enterprises active in the strategic emerging industries in Dawan District, excavate the explorations, discoveries and efforts of Dawan entrepreneurs in their respective industries, as well as their struggle, choice and thinking.

In the second issue of today's report, we will focus on the biopharmaceutical technology enterprise Shenzhen hipoulos. As a returnee venture, HIPROS has obvious technology driven characteristics. Xu Mingyan, a biomedical doctor who returned from the United States, brought the global breakthrough technology from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen, China's "capital of innovation", and started a pioneering journey of accurate diagnosis and treatment of cancer in China. With their unique technologies and core advantages in gene sequencing, liquid biopsy, bioinformatics and big data, they have become accurate tumor gene catchers and benefit mankind with scientific and technological innovation.

Compared with the unicorn, "Gazelle" is not big, but it runs fast and jumps high.

In the 1990s, American economist David birch first put forward the concept of "Gazelle enterprise", which mainly refers to innovative enterprises that cross the valley of death and enter into a period of rapid growth. It has the characteristics of rapid growth, rapid growth and strong professional development ability.

Gazelle enterprises are generally technology-based enterprises, also known as high-growth enterprises, usually lead the transformation and upgrading of emerging industries or traditional industries. At the same time, enterprises have the greatest potential to develop. Therefore, in recent years, the development of gazelle enterprises has attracted extensive attention at home and abroad.

Focusing on accurate diagnosis and treatment of cancer, HIPROS is a gazelle enterprise in the field of biomedicine with a long history. It has advanced technologies in the fields of gene sequencing, liquid biopsy and biological information.

"In the nearly six years since returning home (starting a business), we have made about five rounds of financing, and the first round of financing has obtained 10 million yuan. In addition, it has also been funded by the state, provinces and cities. From basic research to industrial transformation, Shenzhen has a set of perfect support system and development concept. So we should be very happy to start a business in Shenzhen. " Xu Mingyan, founder and chairman of Shenzhen hipoulos Biotechnology Co., Ltd., said in an interview with 21st century economic reporter.

Focusing on accurate diagnosis and treatment of cancer, HIPROS is a gazelle enterprise in the field of biomedicine with a long history. It has advanced technologies in the fields of gene sequencing, liquid biopsy and biological information. Information map

Seize the opportunity of policy and return home to start a business

The success of an enterprise depends on the right time, the right place and the right people.

For Xu Mingyan, 2014 is an important time node in his life. This year, Xu Mingyan gave up his job in San Francisco and returned to China. He resolutely came to Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, and founded a biotechnology enterprise, HIPROS.

Xu Mingyan has rich professional background in the field of biomedicine. He studied with Professor Jeremy Edwards of George church laboratory, a member of the three academies of Harvard University, and has more than 10 invention patents at home and abroad. All of these have laid the foundation for the high-quality development of hypoulos.

At first, Xu Mingyan spent four years in the Department of chemistry of Nanchang University, and then entered Beijing Normal University to study radioactive pharmaceutical chemistry. In 2008, Xu Mingyan went to the University of New Mexico to study biomedical science for five years. His major was divided into gene sequencing, research and development of sequencing technology and instruments, and finally obtained a doctor's degree.

As early as March 2014, Xu Mingyan in the United States heard that the domestic gene sequencing industry ushered in a major adjustment. Due to the problems of excessive asking price and exaggerating the function of relevant commercial organizations, the state began to establish market access mechanism and bring gene testing into the standardized supervision.

"Because gene sequencing was originally a technology, not a big industry. Although we have technology and do scientific research, there is no regulation in accordance with the laws and regulations of the industry, so there are some problems. " Xu Mingyan confessed to reporters.

After the domestic gene sequencing industry embarked on a healthy and orderly development track, in July 2014, Xu Mingyan resolutely decided to give up his high paid job and return home to start his own business from scratch. Facts have proved that Xu Mingyan made a good choice at this time point, which just grasped the policy opportunity in gene sequencing technology.

In the process that a technology may develop into a large-scale industry, it is necessary for the state to introduce relevant policies to carry out supervision, so as to make technology develop in the direction of standardization. Since the 13th five year plan, in order to accelerate the development of biotechnology and biotechnology industry, and build the national core competitiveness and industrial advantages, the Chinese government has increased industrial support for the biological industry, especially in the field of gene sequencing.

Under the policy, a large amount of capital has poured into the gene sequencing industry. According to the data statistics of CB insights, a world-famous market research institution, in the past seven years, the investment funds of global capital to start-up gene sequencing companies have increased rapidly, and the investment amount in 2019 is six times higher than that in 2013.

But it is undeniable that at that time, genetic testing was still a new concept. "When I returned home in 2014, in fact, there were not many domestic experts who recognized this direction. So when we came back in 2014, it was very difficult to find experts to discuss scientific research cooperation. " Xu Mingyan told reporters.

The turning point took place in 2015. MIT Technology Review, an authoritative magazine in the United States, listed liquid biopsy as "the world's top 10 breakthrough technologies", and liquid biopsy became particularly hot. The so-called liquid biopsy refers to the detection of CTC (circulating tumor cells) and ctDNA (circulating tumor DNA) in the blood to diagnose and monitor the tumor of patients. This technology can solve the difficulties of clinical sampling and meet the needs of high-frequency monitoring of patients. In 2016, liquid biopsy has become the focus of capital, and gene sequencing and liquid biopsy have been widely used in clinical practice.

Since then, the industry's academic conferences have gradually strengthened the market education of liquid biopsy. Xu Mingyan said that at present, the acceptance of domestic big cities is very high. Most experts, patients, and family members of patients will know: if the patient has lung cancer, bowel cancer or breast cancer and needs medication, we must do genetic testing. Because only knowing the patient's gene information, medication can be accurate.

Experts and patients have well promoted the market education in big cities. Xu Mingyan told reporters that in the next two or three years, further market education is needed to promote these concepts, new technologies and products to the second and third tier cities, so that more people and more patients can enjoy such a product and service.

CB insights China predicts that by 2023, the market size of liquid biopsy for early screening will reach 344 million US dollars, 15 times the market size of US $23 million in 2018.

Take root in Dawan district and grow rapidly

Headquartered in Shenzhen. In Xu Mingyan's words, Shenzhen is the city most like Silicon Valley, and even surpasses Silicon Valley in many aspects, including support for innovation and entrepreneurship, which is suitable for entrepreneurship.

In fact, the number of gazelle enterprises in Shenzhen is not large nationwide. According to the Hurun China gazelle enterprises 2020 released by Hurun Research Institute, the cities with the largest number of gazelle enterprises are Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. In terms of the number of gazelle enterprises, Beijing and Shanghai have obvious agglomeration advantages. The number of gazelle enterprises on the list is 34 and 30 respectively, far higher than that of 7 in Shenzhen.

Among them, there are 17 enterprises in the industry distribution of gazelle enterprises, ranking first in the number, higher than 14 and 11 in artificial intelligence and e-commerce. Among them, 8 enterprises are newly listed, such as baiaosaitu and Beihai Kangcheng. It can be seen that biomedicine has great development potential and prospect.

However, compared with Shanghai and Beijing, Shenzhen's biomedical industry is still not the strongest in China, including technological innovation, drug innovation, etc. Many well-known foreign pharmaceutical companies usually choose to set their headquarters in Shanghai or Beijing.

Everything has two sides. Although the biomedical industry in Shenzhen is not the strongest in China, the market demand and national strategic demand of biomedicine have not been met. Therefore, based on the current development status of the biomedical industry, the state has given strong support to the whole Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area, including Shenzhen, so that these biomedical enterprises can better take root in the bay area and achieve rapid growth.

In April this year, Guangdong Province issued the notice on several policies and measures to promote the innovation and development of biomedicine. The notice pointed out that Guangzhou and Shenzhen will be taken as the core, and Zhongshan, Foshan, Zhuhai, Dongguan and other cities will be united to create a biomedical technology innovation cluster in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Macao. Domestic and foreign well-known pharmaceutical enterprises are encouraged to set up R & D headquarters or regional R & D centers in Guangdong, with a maximum reward of 10 million yuan.

At present, hapoulos has received more than 70 million yuan from government projects, including research and industrial application of ultra micro tumor liquid biopsy technology, research and product development of ctDNA key technology, research and development and construction of cancer gene database of Chinese people.

Up to now, hapoulos has completed five rounds of financing in five years, and has successively obtained top domestic investment institutions such as Pangu venture capital, Softbank China, preferred capital, Shenzhen Venture Capital, Yifeng capital and so on, which have continuously injected hundreds of millions of yuan.

Both gazelle enterprises and quasi Unicorn enterprises need to meet certain scale benefits and innovation indicators in order to be recognized. At present, hapoulos has applied for 50 invention patents, 49 computer software works and more than 30 SCI papers related to cancer gene detection and analysis.

According to the data of CCID consultants, the market scale of China's whole gene sequencing industry has been in the stage of rapid development since 2010, with a median year-on-year growth rate of more than 40%. Considering the huge dividend brought by China's population, the gene sequencing industry has great potential in China, and the market scale is expected to reach 13.8 billion yuan in 2020.

The cost of cancer treatment is expensive, early diagnosis and early treatment is the best option, because with the gradual aggravation of cancer, the cost of patients continues to increase. It is estimated that the cost of cancer treatment in China is at least 400 billion yuan per year, which is estimated to be 100 billion yuan per year for cancer patients and families.

Liquid biopsy with noninvasive blood test can monitor circulating tumor cells (CTC) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) fragments released into the blood by tumor or metastasis. It has great application prospect in early detection of tumor, and can provide personalized and efficient diagnosis and treatment plan in the whole process of tumor treatment.

Effective treatment after early accurate diagnosis is expected to significantly improve the survival rate of cancer patients. The report "analysis of China's gene sequencing market size and industry development prospects in 2019" points out that the five-year survival rate of cancer patients treated by early diagnosis and timely treatment is significantly higher than that of general postoperative survival rate. Among them, the average five-year survival rate of early diagnosis and treatment is 93%, which is far higher than the average five-year survival rate of 49% after general surgery. Therefore, there is an effective demand for tumor gene sequencing application extremely.

Although tumor gene sequencing has made some progress in the biomedical industry, scientific research is still the mainstream application scenario of gene sequencing. According to the research of CB insights in China, the application of gene sequencing in the scientific research sector in 2019 accounted for more than half of the global gene sequencing market, accounting for 56%.

With the rapid development of gene sequencing instrument, there will be a big demand for accurate data interpretation in the future. At present, there are only more than 100 bioinformatics companies in the world involved in gene data analysis, and the market competition pattern is relatively scattered. Domestic bioinformatics companies engaged in genome data analysis are expected to gradually form a large-scale development.