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Recently, HealthGen Biotech Group plans to jointly establish a joint venture company with its subsidiary, Lizhu Pharmaceutical Group, in Wuhan City. They will invest a total of 1 billion RMB in high-quality major health projects. This investment will help further increase industrial innovation for both groups, building a diversified platform for incubating and introducing high-quality R&D innovation projects, rapidly enriching the company's core pipeline products, and further enhancing the group's sustained profitability.

With technological innovation as its strategic cornerstone and the establishment of a high-barrier complex formulation technology platform as its strategic goal, HealthGen Group focuses on cutting-edge technologies and unmet clinical needs. It focuses on innovative drugs and high-barrier complex formulations, with a rich pipeline layout in areas with significant clinical needs, such as respiratory, digestive, assisted reproduction, mental health, and oncology. This strongly builds the group's diversified product matrix and R&D drug pipeline, developing into a comprehensive pharmaceutical group integrating R&D, production, sales, and services. According to Frost & Sullivan's industry report, in 2021, HealthGen Group, including its subsidiary Lizhu Group, achieved an operating income of 15.9 billion RMB, ranking 6th among domestic comprehensive listed companies.

Innovation is the lifeline of an enterprise. In recent years, HealthGen has broken through barriers in R&D, approval, and production. With multiple high-quality inhaled formulation products such as "Shutanlin," "Lishutu," and "Wushu," it has gradually broken through development bottlenecks in the sub-sector, becoming a leading enterprise in the respiratory treatment field that has broken the overseas monopoly. It has successfully achieved coverage of the main categories of asthma and COPD inhaled treatment drugs in existing and R&D varieties. Through national negotiations and centralized procurement, it has rapidly opened up and covered the domestic market, becoming a leader in domestic high-end complex formulations. Its subsidiary, Lizhu Group, has seen multiple innovative R&D projects enter the harvest period thanks to its continuously developing and improving biopharmaceutical platform and high-barrier complex formulation platform. Currently, products such as Lizhu Recombinant Human Chorionic Gonadotropin Injection, Xiqurex Acetate Injection, and COVID-19 antigen rapid test kits have been approved for marketing. The recombinant novel coronavirus fusion protein vaccine "Likang V-01" has started booster vaccinations in multiple regions including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, and Jiangsu. In addition, Lizhu Curuprel in Acetate Microspheres Injection (one-month sustained release) and Recombinant Humanized Anti-human IL-6R Monoclonal Antibody Injection have been successfully filed for production. According to Frost & Sullivan's industry report, in 2021, HealthGen Group, including its subsidiary Lizhu Group, had a total R&D investment of 1.85 billion RMB, ranking 5th among comprehensive listed companies nationwide.

The establishment of this investment joint venture further demonstrates HealthGen and Lizhu's emphasis on R&D and strategic layout in the major health field, representing a further improvement and acceleration of HealthGen and Lizhu Group's industrial investment layout. In the past, HealthGen and Lizhu have consistently focused on cutting-edge technologies, continuously enriching their industrial chain layout and empowering their product pipelines in areas such as pharmaceutical artificial intelligence (AI), gene editing, cell therapy, small and large molecule innovative drugs, and new medical materials. The group's business expansion has frequently achieved fruitful results, actively participating in equity investments in platform companies in the field of international advanced technology, including Carisma Therapeutics (the world's first company focusing on the engineered transformation of macrophages), Beam Therapeutics (a gene editing company), Elicio Therapeutics (a peptide tumor vaccine company), and LungLife AI (an AI tumor detection company); it also focuses on and invests in innovative Chinese companies, including Jiangsu Xinyuan Su and Shanghai Kenta (small molecule innovative drug companies), InfiniAI (an AI innovative drug development company), and Lvzhu Bio (an innovative vaccine development company). In terms of project introduction, it has obtained the Greater China license for LTS transdermal formulations from Germany and the license for a new generation of tyrosine kinase inhibitors from Tongyuan Kang Pharmaceutical Company. It has also established a joint laboratory with the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry to develop a new generation of PROTAC drugs and signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Tencent Quantum Laboratory to explore the application of artificial intelligence in synthetic biology.

In recent years, Wuhan's comprehensive strength has steadily improved. In 2021, Wuhan's GDP reached 1771.676 billion RMB, with an average annual growth of 7.4% over the past ten years. Its economic aggregate has consistently ranked among the top ten cities nationwide and is leading among central China cities. Wuhan prioritizes education and culture, having gathered 92 universities, 79 academicians, and 149 national-level innovation platforms. Major independent innovation achievements such as the world's first inactivated COVID-19 vaccine and the nation's first fourth-generation 3D flash memory chip have emerged from Wuhan. As Wuhan's high-tech innovation highland, the East Lake High-tech Development Zone, also known as "China Optics Valley," was approved by the State Council as one of the first national high-tech zones in 1991, as the second independent innovation demonstration zone in 2009, and as part of the China (Hubei) Pilot Free Trade Zone in 2016. Its comprehensive strength ranks fifth among 169 national-level high-tech zones nationwide, with its knowledge creation and technological innovation capabilities ranking first. It is one of the ten key "world-class high-tech parks" under national construction. The Wuhan National Bio-industry Base, also known as the Optics Valley Biocity, is the core carrier and bridgehead for Hubei Province, Wuhan City, and the East Lake High-tech Development Zone to gather and develop the life and health industry. In 2022, its comprehensive strength ranked fourth among national bio-industry parks, having gathered over 3,000 well-known domestic and international enterprises, including Pfizer, Sinopharm Group, Mindray Medical, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine, WuXi AppTec, BGI Genomics, United Imaging Intelligence, and Renfu Group.

Leveraging the industrial advantages developed by HealthGen and Lizhu Group over decades and the high-quality project resources in and around Wuhan, establishing a joint venture company will help the group strengthen its layout in the upstream pharmaceutical industry, seek high-quality pharmaceutical R&D resources, and further enhance the R&D capabilities and core competitive advantages of HealthGen and Lizhu Group.

Source: Every Economics News