Global Healthcare Challenges and China’s Solutions Keynote
Healthcare stands as one of the pivotal domains where universities are spearheading groundbreaking innovations, while simultaneously raising the bar of expectations. Both governments and businesses alike are eager to invest in and foster the development of biotechnology in collaboration with academia. A prominent player in this regard is Ms Nisa Leung, Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners, who leads healthcare investments at the firm which has more than 530 portfolio companies in China. She has received recognition from the Forbes Midas List for five consecutive years starting in 2019. Additionally, she was named to the Forbes China Best Women Venture Capitalists List in both 2021 and 2022, and she was included in the Fortune China Most Powerful Women in Business compilation for the years 2022 and 2023. As the keynote speaker at the Presidents’ Forum, Ms Leung reflected on the symbiotic relationship between global higher education and healthcare innovation. Faced with multifaceted challenges including a rapidly aging population, the escalating prevalence of chronic diseases and health inequities, as well as the burgeoning need for digital health solutions, higher education institutions have a pivotal role to play. By nurturing the next generation of healthcare professionals and biomedical researchers, they form the backbone of future healthcare delivery and serve as incubators for groundbreaking research, driving advancements from telemedicine to personalised therapies to AI that venture capital can adeptly amplify. Ms Leung noted that global healthcare has advanced tremendously thanks to technology, but at the same time, there are constraints, particularly the increasingly expensive cost of developing drugs. In the US, the cost per capita has increased 10-fold since 1960. Ms Leung asked the Forum’s audience: “So how do we develop innovative drugs but make them affordable?”
Ms Leung’s company has responded by seeking opportunities in China. About 220 of the companies invested by her firm are in healthcare. One company is now the largest insulin company in China and exports to 35 countries. Big pharmaceutical companies have also been paying attention to the science coming out of China, she said. Activities like these have helped to rapidly raise the profile of the country’s biomedical industry, which now has a product range as broad
Ms Nisa Leung, MH, JP Managing Partner, Qiming Venture Partners
as that seen in the US. For instance, five years ago, only 10 per cent of licensing deals in China involved Chinese innovative drugs shipped to the rest of the world; in 2022 that figure increased to 27 per cent. The cheaper costs in China give it an advantage, as drugs can be 10 times or more cheaper than in the US. Ms Leung shared that while Chinese companies were cautious not to antagonise the US market, they also wanted to provide more affordable care to the rest of the world. To that end, her firm is investing more in AI-based firms, which can expedite drug discovery and develop drugs much faster than conventional means. They are also continuing to work closely with academia, governments and other partners to develop new drugs to improve human wellness. The keynote address inspired insightful discussion from the Forum’s audience. A question was raised on how prices in China could be much more affordable when costs and salaries were not proportionately cheaper. Ms Leung replied that the difference was partly the higher profit margins in the West, and partly the cheaper cost of doing clinical trials in China. For instance, one hospital they work with conducts more heart bypasses than the entire
state of California each year, so fewer people are needed to facilitate clinical trials. There was also concern on whether the drug industry could become a target of security concerns in the current unstable political environment. Ms Leung felt confident that there was commitment from both the US and China to keep them separate and noted that collaborations were on the rise between multinational corporations and Chinese biotech firms. When asked about the challenges of private versus public health systems and her firm’s work on preventive medicines, Ms Leung noted that the US, which has a strong private system, was negotiating down the prices of top pharmaceutical sales products to make them more affordable and her firm was looking at how to work with multinational corporations to reduce clinical trial costs by collaborating with Chinese clinical trial centres. On the public side, China has signalled that innovative drug pricing should be determined by the market to help stimulate research and discovery. On preventive medicines and longevity, her company has invested in diagnostic companies that focus on this.
The audience also queried whether Hong Kong academics were doing enough to leverage and promote their expertise in clinical trials and their links with the Chinese Mainland. According to Ms Leung, Hong Kong has advantages that are attracting more and more innovative drug companies, including an advanced clinical trials centre. There is an urgent need to translate and commercialise findings from the lab and apply them to benefit human health. This urgency has been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The task is not simple as it requires not only scientific research but expertise in preclinical and clinical trials, human relations, portfolio management, and engagement with external stakeholders including the government. Teamwork across academia and the private and public sectors is critical to success. “We really need people who are experienced in building biotech companies to do it together,” Ms Leung concluded.
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