Three overseas returnees with doctoral degrees in Nanjing Frontier Biotechnology Company Limited developed the long-acting HIV fusion inhibitor Albuvirtide which will file an application for a new drug and enter market in 2016.
The latest issue of Nature Medicine, a world-renowned biomedical research journal, pointed out that developing new long-acting drugs is effective for coping with failures in long-term drug therapy of AIDS. Albuvirtide from China has entered the last stage of clinical trials and is expected to become the first long-acting HIV inhibitor in the world to enter the market. Xie Dong, who once led or engaged in the development of three anti-HIV drugs in the US, was hired as one of the first “Recruitment Program of Global Experts” of China in 2002.
Mastering technologies with independent intelligent property rights, Xie returned to China to start his own business focusing on the research on new drugs for HIV cure. Later, Lu Rongjian, postdoctor from Harvard Medical School of the US, and Doctor Wang Changjin from the college of pharmacy of University of Kentucky also joined his program. The three were fully devoted to this new drug for more than ten years with the total investment costing more than 100 million yuan ($16.29 million).
