Animal experimentation is the foundation of drug research and development, and it has an irreplaceable and critical role in the birth of every new drug or new therapy. Every development in the field of modern biomedicine is inseparable from the participation and contribution of laboratory animals. In the long and expensive development of new drugs, animal-based in vivo experiments take 1 to 2 years and account for more than 5% of the total expenditure. The results of animal experiments directly determine whether the project continues or terminates early.
However, for many drug research and development or CRO companies, in the process of animal experimentation often face many pain points: first, to build a standard laboratory animal facilities, high cost, long time, plus operation and maintenance and labor costs, the cost is relatively high; secondly, the experimental environment may be unstable, such as environmental microorganisms, temperature and humidity, light, feed bedding selection and other external factors will directly lead to the instability of animal experimental results; again, experimental animals are often sensitive to the environment, In captivity, coupled with the influence of various drugs and operations, it is easy to produce stress responses, which interfere with the experimental results; finally, the industry's requirements for the professionalism of technicians are also higher than those of the general industry.
In view of the above pain points, 36Kr has recently contacted Qi Shang Bio to build a one-stop standardized, standardized and fully traceable shared laboratory animal platform to serve enterprises in need.
Animal rooms for creatures
Summarizing its facilities and services: the company has 1500 square meters of barrier facilities, which can provide long-term stable exclusive animal breeding and experimental space; the entire facility is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and customers can carry out their own animal experiments at any time; and each laboratory is equipped with an independent access control system to ensure the safety and privacy of experimental data; in addition, Qishang will also provide training services for animal experiments to help customers establish their own in vivo experimental teams.
In addition, Dr. Zhou Weixin, general manager of Qi Shang Biology, told 36Kr that the entire animal experiment process is very long, and any place in the middle is not standardized, which may affect the experimental results, in order to declare the data reproducible, it is necessary to ensure the stability of the experimental results. Therefore, the standardization of laboratory animals and the full traceability of the whole process are indispensable.
To this end, Qi Shang Bio has also specially developed a corresponding software system, which can realize the whole process of procurement warehousing, inspection and quarantine, regional control, environmental records, real-time positioning, personnel control, technical processing, and data preservation, so as to achieve advance warning, in-process monitoring, and post-event traceability, so as to help customers successfully complete animal experiments and save relevant data.
The management system of the creature on the qi
"Experimenters can view the temperature, humidity and other environmental data records of the laboratory through the software, and can also view the real-time status of the laboratory; the veterinary team will also wear a recorder every day to inspect all experimental animals, observe and record the progress of feeding, and take pictures of the status of each experimental animal and upload it to the server to help the experimenter understand the animal health status and experimental progress in real time." ”
Dr. Zhou Weixin pointed out that in recent years, thanks to the rapid development of the biomedical industry, especially the emergence of new technologies such as gene editing and stem cells, the corresponding research and development pipelines are also expanding rapidly, and the demand for animal testing services has also risen rapidly; there have also been major benefits on the policy side, such as the "Industrial Structure Adjustment Guidance Catalogue (2019 Version)" on the focus on "standardized breeding of laboratory animals and animal testing services". All these have given Qi Shang Bio the opportunity to grow and develop, "the company was established in just over a year, that is, to achieve good returns."
He revealed that in fact, at the beginning of the company's establishment, it was expected to be for start-up pharmaceutical companies, and there were many listed companies in the back. "This is related to our complete qualifications and diversified services, no matter how big the enterprise is, once a new pipeline is to be developed, involving new animal experiments, it may be necessary to have new corresponding qualifications, once missing, new experiments cannot be carried out, and we can help solve it quickly."
Dr. Zhou Weixin gave an example, during the epidemic, the research and development of the new crown vaccine was once hot, and it was necessary to carry out corresponding animal experiments and SPF-level guinea pigs, "which created a problem, there are 1-2 suppliers, and there are very few animal facilities with corresponding qualifications, and we have this qualification." ”
He believes that Qi Shang Bio is equivalent to playing a role of "a converter between laboratory animal manufacturers and R&D enterprises /CRO customers", ensuring that customers have a good experimental environment and corresponding technical guidance after purchasing experimental animals, helping customers save money and management costs, "This is a new business model, and it will not touch anyone's cake."
When talking about market capacity and scale, he frankly said that this is a linear growth market, and the revenue ceiling depends on the overall R & D investment of the market - "customers have animal testing needs, no need at all", because customer demand is relatively unstable, which requires the company to have a large customer pool (such as relying on mature development of entrepreneurial parks), in order to achieve long-term and orderly development.
Finally, to introduce the background of the team, Qi Shang Bio was founded by Shanghai Furante Animal Health Co., Ltd. in Shanghai International Medical Park in May 2019. The company's general manager Zhou Weixin is a doctor of biomedical sciences and NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, with 20 years of research experience in related fields, good at experimental animal model construction, use and transformation; chief veterinarian Cui Jinpeng has been in the industry for more than 30 years, has published a number of papers and has a number of patents; deputy general manager Chu Shenqiang is a software-based integrated operation expert, who has worked in top 500 multinational companies for many years; in addition, the experimental animal platform management and operation and maintenance personnel have worked in listed pharmaceutical companies or CRO companies for many years.