China's new drug R&D force has been promoted to the second echelon. How can the "14th Five-Year Plan" be improved?
"According to the latest data released by McKinsey in 2020, my country's new drug research and development accounted for 13.9% of the world's total, ranking second in the second echelon." At the China Pharmaceutical Development Conference from February 26 to 27, the vice president of national major special technology for new drug creation Teacher and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Chen Kaixian showed his achievements and also raised challenges.
He said that at present, the annual output of medicines in my country is hundreds of thousands of tons, but most of them are of low value, and there is a clear gap with the United States, which is the first echelon.
"In order to solve clinical problems in the development of new drugs, it is very important to identify the source." said Academician Wang Chen, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, President of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and President of Peking Union Medical College.
The international new drug development path is generally that there is clinical demand, the laboratory (through mechanism research) finds the target, and the company follows up (translation) research.
However, there are still some problems at the source of new drug research and development in my country, such as finding targets from foreign literature and conducting secondary innovations based on foreign original drugs.
"In order to comply with the '14th Five-Year Plan', pharmaceutical innovation should adhere to demand orientation and problem orientation, break rigid disciplinary boundaries, and actively promote interdisciplinary integration." Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Executive Director of the Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Deputy Director of Lanzhou University President Wang Rui said at the meeting that the current medical field should overcome the shortcomings of single-handedness and scattered resources, focus on major practical problems, serve major national needs, further promote organized scientific research, and comprehensively improve the scientific and technological capabilities to serve national strategies.
R&D and innovation in the field of medicine face people's life and health.
China's new drug research and development force has ranked second echelon, how can the "14th Five-Year Plan" go to a higher level?
How can my country's pharmaceutical innovation shoulder the tasks of promoting industrial development and meeting clinical needs?
Dozens of academicians discussed development together at the China Pharmacy Development Conference hosted by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.
Clinical resources need to be more fully utilized
In my country's new drug R&D chain, clinicians are accustomed to joining from the first clinical phase or later than the first clinical phase, which makes it difficult for new drug R&D to fully meet the clinical needs from the source, and also makes my country's new drug R&D lack of original innovation. .
"China's clinical research resources are rich, but there are many problems in clinical practice." Wang Chen exemplified that a small molecule diagnostic reagent drug needed by the respiratory department has not been developed in China, and industrial preparations have been used instead in clinical practice until recently. This problem was solved by the collaboration of clinicians and pharmacy experts.
The following set of data makes people feel more intuitive gaps.
"The number of hospitalizations in my country is about 200 million each year. If the average hospitalization days are calculated as 8-10 days, the total number of bed-days is 1.6-2 billion. These are relatively fine research materials." Wang Chen said.
However, in the face of such a huge amount of clinical research data, no valid data research conclusions have been formed.
Among the global registered clinical studies, the number of registered studies in my country only accounts for about 3%.
Relevant experts said that facing the "14th Five-Year Plan", efforts should be made to improve the industry-university-research system, improve the level of open cooperation in medical technology innovation, fully stimulate the willingness of clinicians to explore clinical needs, and integrate more deeply into the complete ecological chain of pharmaceutical research and development.
With the help of big data, artificial intelligence is the development direction
"With the continuous development of new experimental technologies for drug research, such as multi-omics technology, high-throughput screening technology, DNA coding technology, structural biology technology, etc., a large amount of data has been generated, and effective analysis and mining of these data will be efficient Promote the research of innovative drugs in my country." Chen Kaixian said that artificial intelligence technology can greatly improve the efficiency of drug research and development.
According to the data, many multinational pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and Johnson & Johnson have cooperated with AI companies to develop new drugs.
There is a view that in the next 3-5 years, drug candidates without AI-driven model research will not be able to enter clinical trials.
"Through the amino acid sequence of a protein, its three-dimensional structure can be predicted, which plays a very important role in drug research." Chen Kaixian introduced that my country's artificial intelligence-enabled drug research and development work is also continuing to advance.
According to reports, Huawei and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly developed the iPhord algorithm. The prediction accuracy of the protein folding structure on the international authoritative test platform exceeds the existing best algorithm by 20%, achieving "targeting ten rings".
"In the future, our team will seek new breakthroughs and new progress in drug-induced protein structural changes and structural changes in protein-protein interactions." Chen Kaixian said that precision drug design based on big data and artificial intelligence technology will enable new drugs. R&D design has more advantages, shortening drug R&D time, improving R&D efficiency, and controlling R&D costs.