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Wuxi PharmaTech's Steve Yang: Crown Prince of the Returnee Pack

publication date: Jun 13, 2014
 | 
author/source: Shannon Ellis, Staff Writer, BioWorld™ (www.bioworld.com)

Editor's note -- BioWorld™, the daily biopharma newsletter from ThomsonReuters, attended the ChinaBio® Partnering Forum, held in Suzhou during May, and produced a series of articles based on panel discussions and interviews with participants. The articles detail the insider’s sense of rapid development in China’s biopharma sector – every year seems different from the one before. The articles will be reprinted in ChinaBio® Today over the next few weeks with the gracious consent of BioWorld (www.bioworld.com).

In this installment, the series ends, appropriately, with closing remarks to the 2014 Partnership Forum from Steve Yang, who recently became Chief Operating Officer of Wuxi PharmaTech. Dr. Yang talks about the tremendous progress in China life science over the past 25 years – and he shares some thoughts on the brave new future that WuXi sees for China drug development (see original BioWorld article). 

Previous articles focused on:

  • Anand Gautam of Novo Nordisk  talks about his company’s  partnering goals and some basic research tips for potential partners (see article);
  • China’s venture capital firms help drive the growth of the country's innovative drug sector (see article);
  • Best strategies for dealing with China’s Center for Drug Evaluation (see article); and,
  • Innovation in China life sciences, using as examples Ruiyi, Shenogen Pharma, Suzhou Alphamab Co. and Mabspace Biosciences (see article).

 

Wuxi PharmaTech's Steve Yang: Crown Prince of the Returnee Pack

A fitting end to the ChinaBio® Partnering Conference, held last month in Suzhou, Steve Yang, the newly anointed executive vice president and chief operating officer of Wuxi PharmaTech, left the crowd of entrepreneurs, scientists, executives and investors feeling optimistic about China's recent evolution and inspired to tackle the road ahead to bring China to a global level.

Soft spoken but animated, Dr. Yang treated the packed room to an engaging flow of insights, reflecting the perspective of a returnee. But not just any returnee. Since 2006, Dr. Yang has been a leader of the sea turtles, setting up some of the first major multinational R&D efforts in China with a focus on early drug development, first for Pfizer and then for AstraZeneca, and now COO of WuXi. Steve Yang is the crown prince of the returnee pack.

As a reminder of how far China has come, Yang reminisced about his days as an undergraduate at Fudan University, a top school, where something as common as a disposable pipette was out of reach, requiring that he and others wash tips after each experiment. While this may have contributed to his departure for a university in the U.S., nonetheless he got the best lesson of all: inspiration. According to Yang, "thanks to a great education we got a glimpse of the exciting future of science."

After a stint at a university in the US Midwest, Yang completed his doctorate at the University of California, San Francisco, and found himself at the right place at the right time: the birthplace of biotech. All five of his thesis reviewers were a part of the newly emerging biotech explosion.

Seeing it first hand in the Bay Area, Yang learned the lesson of the power of "clustering" in the development of an industry. Yang described the elements of clustering that he sees propelling China's Yangzi River Delta region (encompassing Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou) and Beijing area (with Tianjin).

Starting with "geographic proximity," aided by the newly built transportation networks of high-speed trains, clusters allow people to meet easily and assist partnerships with other organizations "with 'complementary capabilities,' so biotechs do not have to do everything from scratch like a traditional company." Lastly, there is the returnee factor to human relationships, "Some people say six degrees of separation; among this crowd there is at most two degrees of separation, a powerful connection to build trust, to share knowledge and insight."

He used the example of his new company to demonstrate clustering, saying, "Within 90 minutes of this room, we have four facilities: a GMP small-molecule API plant, a GLP toxicology lab, a plant being built in Changzhou for commercial scale API production and the GMP-certified biologics facility, the first batch of a novel antibody produced for Taimed having just received CFDA approval, a first for China."

"After the last eight years of tremendous growth in terms of R&D capability, we now have a very vibrant ecosystem including multinational R&D centers, CROs, domestic pharmas and academics as well as investors and lawyers. At the core there are entrepreneurs with the same passion as those from San Francisco, San Diego and Boston who carry dreams to make breakthroughs in drugs, devices and diagnostics to benefit patients."

Having helped to build the R&D capabilities first for Pfizer and later AstraZeneca, where his team was able to identify the first preclinical oncology candidate for global development, Yang is clearly excited about his new challenge at Wuxi. As a CRO, the jump to Wuxi may seem quizzical to some but Yang shared his vision for his new role.

China as a Technology, Innovation Amplifier

In the spirit of leapfrogging, where countries like China that develop late can go directly to the most advanced technology, Yang is clearly learning from the example of the U.S. and thinking about China's relative competitive advantage.

Wuxi, which has built its reputation as a research service provider to global companies, has much bigger ambitions than just being a CRO, as evidenced with the recent addition of Hua Mu, an esteemed drug developer from Hutchinson MediPharma and installing Sophie Qiao, to lead their venture capital fund.

Yang, who said he was counting only "day 16 at Wuxi," was attracted by founder Ge Li's vision: "To make this an open access platform, to allow inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs anywhere to access services and to build end-to-end capabilities from small molecule to clinical development and biologics to clinical production and soon commercial production."

Taking it a step further he said, "I am keen to explore the concept of the Amazon web service based on cloud computing, where you can have virtual service, computational analytics over a distance. By the same token, we envision at Wuxi our entire R&D platform could be offered anywhere around the world through a cloud-like service to offer a global quality standard with easy transparency and security like Amazon or other cloud services."

Making the case that the geographic source in the end may not be that important, for example, Yang pointed out that most people don’t know Amazon's cloud services are based in Northern Virginia. The fact that Wuxi originates in China need not be relevant either.

"If you have a brilliant idea regardless of whether you are in Gothenburg or Amsterdam or Copenhagen in a world of ubiquitous connectivity online, why not tap into that? Instead of seeing a region as a potential threat, think about it as a potential opportunity."

Although he does pull back to say that it is not possible to completely digitize biomedical research, given the need for trust and the regulatory complexity, he said, "there is a happy medium where innovative insight is everywhere to tap into."

Cautiously optimistic, Yang admits it's not all rosy because tremendous challenges remain. Still, Yang is comfortable dreaming big, having seen over the long term the amazing progress China has made, even if in the short term it does not always look so rosy.

"When I first returned I thought things would immediately improve. Obviously that did not happen," he said. "You have to build things up step-by-step, scientist-by-scientist, partner-by partner. It takes time to build R&D capability."

He said the real challenge for China in the next decade is to sustainably deliver differentiated drugs whether against an existing or novel target, not just here, but also globally. So while the last decade of hard work to build the foundation has been done by Yang and others, it is the next phase that will really count.

"I am cautiously optimistic about the future but want to avoid hype," Yang noted. "We are tracking along, doing interesting science. But there are so many things outside of our control."

"We need to demonstrate that investors can earn their returns, not in the narrow sense of the GPs and LPs but importantly, also the government that has built fantastic infrastructure and established a set of policies to develop the sector."

Yang has earned his optimism. "If I reflect over the last eight years and back to 1989, exactly 25 years, everything that has happened in China is clearly beyond my wildest dreams or sense of possibility.”

Disclosure: ChinaBio® has a business relationship with WuXi PharmaTech..


 

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