Experts call for: don't lose the development opportunity of peptide and protein medicine again

[reprinted on people's daily] Zhang Ye, reporter of our newspaper China takes the lead in the synthesis of bovine crystalline insulin, but the US company is the first listed related drug, experts call for: China is the first one to synthesize bovine crystalline insulin in the world, but the first drug on the market is American company At present, the annual sales of insulin in China is close to 20 billion, and the share of domestic enterprises is very small When it comes to the development of peptide and protein drugs, experts are mixed On July 5, the 14th China International polypeptide academic conference and the 5th Asia Pacific International polypeptide academic conference jointly organized by Shanghai Institute of medicine, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China Pharmaceutical University were held in Nanjing Many experts take this call to pay attention to the research and development of peptide and protein drugs, increase policy support and capital investment, and not miss the opportunity for development again Peptide drugs are similar to protein drugs, which are composed of amino acids The difference lies in the number and spatial structure of amino acids Compared with the traditional chemical drugs, they are characterized by high activity and safety, strong specificity and good drug properties Chemical drugs are composed of compound molecules Most of the non-target chemicals are like pepper when they enter the human body They kill the virus and pathological cells, but also easily injure healthy organs "Peptide and protein drugs are composed of amino acids, the metabolites of which are also amino acids, which are essential elements for human body." Professor Xu Hanmei from China Pharmaceutical University said, "therefore, peptide drugs have low toxicity and high safety." At the same time, peptide and protein drugs are highly targeted (specific) and will not damage normal cells, tissues and organs Therefore, this kind of medicine has good applicability for cancer, cardiovascular disease, immune related diseases, metabolic diseases and infectious diseases In recent years, it is more and more difficult to find chemical drug targets, which leads to high time and cost of research and development, while peptide drugs benefit from the progress of artificial synthesis technology, and the cost advantage is gradually reflected At present, the global peptide drug market has exceeded 20 billion US dollars, with more than 80 kinds of peptide drugs Chronic disease treatment is the core market of peptide drugs, accounting for more than 75% of the global peptide drug market, in which rare diseases, tumors and diabetes are the "troika" driving the peptide drug market Experts told reporters that although its overall scale is not large, it has maintained a long-term high-speed growth Especially in the background that our country has gradually stepped into an aging society and the health care level of the whole people is constantly improving, the advantages of peptide and protein drugs are increasingly prominent Among them, anti-tumor new drugs developed by China University of pharmaceutical sciences such as antiangel peptide and anti AIDS new drugs independently developed by Nanjing frontier biology such as ibovetai have shown good results in clinical experiments, and ibovetai is expected to become the first long-term anti AIDS new drug on the market in the world However, the development of peptide and protein drugs in China lags behind the developed countries in general According to the reporter, the relevant projects only account for 5% of the major national new drug creation projects Professor Xu Hanmei from China Pharmaceutical University told reporters that in the field of biopharmaceutical industry, most pharmaceutical companies still focus on the development of antibody and vaccine drugs, while peptide drugs with stronger drug-resistance and relatively short R & D cycle are ignored At present, more than 30 peptide drugs produced and sold by Chinese pharmaceutical companies are basically generic drugs and APIs, and the active ingredients extracted from natural substances are the main ones, with large pollution, low added value and unstable quality According to long Yaqiu, researcher of Shanghai Institute of medicine, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in recent years, the mainstream peptide drugs in the world are synthetic or structural modified, which not only have uniform composition and stable quality, but also have less pollution and high efficiency in the production process However, the artificial synthesis technology also puts forward higher requirements for pharmaceutical enterprises, which requires strict quality control, stable synthesis, separation and purification process, easy to scale up production and other necessary conditions Because of the lessons of synthetic insulin, experts strongly appealed that the development of peptide and protein drugs in China should not miss the good opportunity On the one hand, the government needs to increase policy support and capital investment It is suggested that relevant departments conduct in-depth research, set up peptide and protein drugs in the application guide, and support the construction of platform for several innovative drug varieties and key technologies in the field of major diseases such as cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid disease, etc; On the other hand, experts also call on enterprises to pay attention to peptide and protein drug development, strengthen production university research cooperation, enhance the international competitiveness of innovative peptide drug research and development in China and promote the rapid development of peptide industry through the strong cooperation between universities and enterprises.