Affected by the global pandemic of the new crown epidemic in the past three years, the biopharmaceutical industry has continued to attract the attention of the capital market. As an important force in the development of the global pharmaceutical industry and one of the best countries in the world to deal with the new crown epidemic, China has adapted to the changes and impacts brought about by the new crown epidemic. Although the scale of investment and financing in the biopharmaceutical industry has fluctuated to a certain extent, it has shown a spiral upward trend as a whole.
The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted a new and faster regulatory framework. Since December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, WHO, and other regulatory agencies have authorized emergency use or approval of at least 20 COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests. mRNA vaccines did not exist commercially in January 2020, and today more than 3 billion doses of mRNA vaccines have been delivered to people around the world. This speed was not seen before the epidemic.
The sectors that have directly benefited from the new crown epidemic include IVD (InVitro Dagnostic products, in vitro diagnostic products), vaccines, and small molecule CDMO (Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization, custom R&D and production institutions).
In the long run, additional orders and revenue from Covid-19 will decrease and disappear. IVD companies and small molecule CDMO companies need to use the funds obtained to expand business types and regions, digest high valuations, and maintain performance growth; the new track of mRNA in the vaccine sector is developing rapidly in China, despite the challenges of technology, safety It is still a promising direction to overcome challenges in aspects such as performance and application field expansion.
In addition to its direct impact on business, COVID-19 has also reshaped supply chains. During the epidemic, foreign suppliers were greatly affected, and enterprises sought localized alternatives, which brought development opportunities to the upstream of IVD, vaccine and other industries.
Four key points will determine the lifeblood of global biomedicine: coded drugs, machine learning and artificial intelligence, changes in the development environment and value reshaping of biological companies, and the reform of the regulatory system in the post-epidemic era.
Codable drugs refer to the existence of computer-like "program codes" in the biological field. For example, DNA, RNA and proteins all have corresponding codes. The new crown mRNA vaccine encodes the spike protein on the surface of the new coronavirus through mRNA, and produces the same spike protein as the surface of the virus and enters it into the human body, so that the human body can recognize the virus in advance and can generate an immune response immediately.
"Codable" drugs are more precise and effective. Recently, it was reported that 100% of the human genome has been sequenced. Codable drugs are promising in the future. Artificial intelligence can help humans do more than what people know about the coding mechanisms of living things themselves. For example, when we use artificial intelligence to analyze biological big data, we can find many potential causes and effects between biological genetics and diseases, and can use these correlations to conduct biological experiments.
Although it seems that this field has played a great role at the moment, this is actually only the tip of the iceberg of the potential of artificial intelligence in the biological field. Artificial intelligence can now predict the structure of proteins.
While capital is chasing biomedicine, new trends in the biomedical industry are also emerging, such as coded drugs and the integration of artificial intelligence and biomedicine, which are worthy of attention.
