Institutional innovation key to biomedical R&D

China is actively exploring innovative approaches to organizing biomedical research, betting that institutional reforms can help close one of the industry's most persistent gaps — turning laboratory discoveries into marketable medicines.

At the center of such efforts is the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biology and Chemistry (IRCBC), affiliated with the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The IRCBC has spent more than a decade building an interdisciplinary research model that links basic science, chemistry, structural biology, clinical medicine and drug development.

The model is designed to overcome what scientists call the "valley of death" — the long and uncertain path between fundamental scientific discoveries and clinical applications, where many promising findings fail to become viable therapies.

"China now produces a huge volume of basic research, but the real challenge is how to transform original scientific discoveries into original medicines," said Junying Yuan, director of the IRCBC, in an interview with China Daily. "That is where we believe institutional innovation matters."

Yuan, a world-renowned cell biologist who spent three decades at Harvard Medical School before returning to China in 2020, said China's pharmaceutical industry has rapidly become a global force in licensing innovative medicines overseas, but still lacks enough first-in-class drugs originating from entirely new biological mechanisms.

The National Medical Products Administration said cross-border out-licensing deals for China's innovative drugs hit a record $60 billion in the first quarter, a 73 percent increase year-on-year and already amounting to nearly half of the total $135.7 billion worth of agreements signed in the full year of 2025.

"When you're catching up, you can learn from whoever is ahead. But once you're at the front, there is nobody left to imitate. You have to rely on original science," she said.

Founded in 2012, the center deliberately began focusing on neurodegenerative diseases years before they became a strategic research priority globally. While cancer research historically attracted far greater funding and produced far more drug candidates, Yuan argued that diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease have become increasingly urgent challenges amid aging global populations.

Rather than organizing laboratories around traditional academic disciplines, the center recruits researchers whose expertise could collectively address common scientific questions from different disciplines. Cell biologists, chemists, structural biologists and imaging specialists work on shared disease targets instead of operating independently.

The approach differs from conventional academic evaluation systems that often emphasize individual achievements and publication records.

"We don't recruit people simply because they published papers in top journals. We recruit scientists whose expertise complements others and who can solve important scientific problems together," Yuan said.

Researchers meet every two weeks to present unpublished data, exchange criticism and identify opportunities for collaboration. The center evaluates researchers based on their scientific contributions rather than authorship order or publication quotas, she added.

Long-term funding is another cornerstone of the model. Instead of requiring rapid publications, researchers receive support for more than five to 10 years, allowing them to tackle high-risk scientific questions.

"Professor Yuan wants us to become independent scientists," said Gao Zhiwei, a third-year PhD student in Yuan's laboratory. "She emphasizes identifying meaningful questions and designing rigorous experiments, instead of simply producing papers."

The approach has nevertheless produced internationally recognized research. Since its establishment in 2012, the center has published more than 600 peer-reviewed papers that have been cited more than 36,000 times. It has an H-index of 84 — meaning at least 84 of its publications have each been cited 84 times or more, a widely used indicator of sustained scientific impact. Its findings have appeared in journals including Nature, Science, Cell, Immunity, Neuron and Nature Methods.

Several of those discoveries have already entered clinical development and commercialization through long-term collaborations with leading Shanghai hospitals.

One of its most advanced projects emerged from more than a decade of research by Liu Cong, a protein biologist at the center, whose team developed a fluorine-18-labeled PET molecular tracer capable of visualizing pathological protein aggregates in living brains, potentially allowing Parkinson's disease to be detected years before patients develop the characteristic motor symptoms.

"We hope to shift diagnosis from clinical symptoms to biological markers," Liu told China Daily. "If high-risk individuals can be identified five to 10 years earlier, intervention may become much more effective."

More than 150 patients have already undergone imaging studies using the tracer through collaboration with Huashan Hospital affiliated with Fudan University, Liu said.

The technology is now being commercialized through SynuSight Biotech, one of five biotech companies incubated by the research center, and has also received funding from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research to support overseas clinical studies.

Yuan cautioned, however, that artificial intelligence, despite its growing role in biomedical research, will not eliminate the need for extensive laboratory validation.

"AI can help identify promising molecules. But chemical optimization, animal studies and predicting safety in humans remain major bottlenecks," she said.

Researchers at the center are also applying AI to drug discovery. One team has developed an atom-level generative AI model for protein interface design, while another is using AI to accelerate molecular engineering.

Liu said technology alone cannot explain the center's success.

"The biggest advantage is not a single instrument or platform. It's the institutional design," he said.

That organizational model, together with close partnerships with leading Shanghai hospitals, sustained public investment from both the CAS and the Shanghai municipal government, helped create what Yuan calls a bridge across the "valley of death".