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Commercial Development Manager Greg Macpherson has recently returned from a five-day trip to China aimed at building relationships with life sciences groups in Suzhou near Shanghai, and advancing our formal partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
As part of the trip, Greg joined representatives from the State Government (Health Industries SA), IDT Australia (CMAX), and UniSA to visit Suzhou Industrial Park and BioBay – their bio industry incubator.
Besides a tour and formal dinner meeting, the delegation introduced their respective organisations and promoted the benefits of conducting clinical research in Adelaide at an information workshop attended by about 70 representatives of Chinese pharma companies. Greg used the opportunity to highlight the expertise of our world-leading researchers who can help Chinese companies with advice on pre-clinical packages, protocol design and ethics applications.
A lively discussion with Chinese companies indicated there was keen interest in doing trials in Adelaide; especially since clinical trial approvals in China are very complicated and time consuming. A common theme of the local Chinese companies was their desire to get through clinical trials quickly as their main goal is to become drug manufacturers.
Greg then visited Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). There he met with staff from the Advanced Industrial Technology Research Institute (AITRI), which provides a commercialisation service to SJTU similar to ARI for the University of Adelaide.
AITRI expressed interested in working with ARI on projects that are suitable for the Chinese market, and invited us to put forward suitable technologies to explore joint commercialisation with them taking the lead in China. In addition he visited a research lab at the Sixth People’s Hospital affiliated with SJTU.
Overall, Greg reported that there are very good prospects for attracting clinical work to Adelaide, and for China to be a more realistic target market for technology commercialisation, with cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes and translational medicine likely targets of high interest.
Photo: Greg (third on the left) pictured with the South Australian delegation and other speakers at the information workshop
