China's Antibiotics Industry Seeks for Sustainable Development Strategy
Year:2010 ISSUE:4
COLUMN:NEW SETUP, AGREEMENT & PLAN
Click:344    DateTime:Nov.02,2010
China's Antibiotics Industry Seeks for Sustainable Development Strategy       

Antibiotics are defined as chemical substances that can kill or inhibit certain other microorganisms. Antibiotics are especially active against microbial. Furthermore, it also exerts great effect on such field as against cancer, viral, protozoan, parasite, and insects. Some antibiotics have the function of inhibiting special enzyme, other antibiotics have the function of other bioactive or physiological activities. To sum up, it is closely linked with human health.
   After sixty years' development, China's antibiotics industry has ranked the first worldwide in scale. The production of antibiotic active ingredients including penicillin, streptomycin, tetracycline, oxytetracycline, and gentamicin, etc. has already possessed overwhelming advantages.  
    However, China's research and development ability is still in primary stage, and there is still a wider gap compared with the developed countries, for 70% products are made by imitation. Therefore, enhancing scientific research achievements has been put on agenda. China's antibiotic industry mainly concentrates on producing low-end active ingredients, and there is still a big gap in synthetic process of semi-synthetic antibiotics and quality of preparations. Given such conditions, it is essential for China's antibiotic industry to seek a sustainable development way based on consecutive technical innovations.    
   As of 1999, China has approximately 200 antibiotic active ingredients manufacturers, together producing 100 varieties of antibiotic active ingredients with total output reaching approximately 60 000 tons per year. China has 120 antibiotic active ingredients manufacturers with a combined output of 140 000 tons in 2009 and the market value of RMB60 billion. The annual growth rate of production was averaged at 24%. China's production scales for several antibiotics have already ranked first in the world.  
   China's antibiotic industry has achieved international comparable advantages in scale indicators such as production capacity and output, however, it has still many problems and shortages. The main problem is that China is using outdated technologies that leaves a wider gap compared with international advanced level. In fact, production strains that are widely used in China's industrial production of penicillin, erythromycin, cephalosporin, avermectins, tylosin, and flavomycin, as well as various high level gene engineering products, are imported from foreign countries at a high price. Worse still, due to the lack of further modification and improvement, China's technical indicators of strains are gradually lagging behind.
   In addition, China's antibiotic industry is mostly concentrated on low-end APIs, and there is still a wide gap in synthetic process and preparations quality of the semi-synthetic antibiotics. The market share of downstream products of Chinese companies such as semi-synthetic penicillin, cephalothin, and preparations, is less than 5% in the market outside China, and domestic demand for plenty of new generation cephalothins needs to be met by imports.
    Facing these difficulties and challenges, China's antibiotic industry shall devote more efforts to strengthen technological breakthrough. However, decades of separation between production and research and the situation of each company fighting its own battle formed by the planning economy system, has become the largest obstacle in breaking through the industry's bottleneck. It is pointed out by industry experts that "basic research, developmental research, and application research have been operated separately in different companies or organizations in China. The innovations of new medicines and the commercialization of research achievements are not matched each other. The research and development input is insufficient, scattered and repetitive, leading to the dilemma of technological backwardness." Therefore, China's antibiotic industry must blaze a way of sustainable development fitting itself and basing on constant technical innovation.
   At this very time, China's six ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Science and Technology issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting Establishment of Technical Innovation Union for Industries. Thus, the technical innovation union for the antibiotic industry came into being by following the trend.
   "One enterprise is supposed to prepare RMB10 million on tackling seven technical issues, and so do other companies. Then, the expenditure allocated for each issue is only around RMB1.5 million. Now, in the union, if there are four companies needing to resolve the same seven issues, the total expenditure to support these R&D will amont to RMB40 million, with the R&D expenditure averaged for each issue exceeding RMB5 million. In fact, not limited to this, the cooperative companies can still integrate their R&D technicians and resources, conduct rational division of work, tackle key problems together, and realize achievements sharing", said Yue Jin, the secretary-general of the union, in illustrating cooperative effects of the union.  
    More importantly, the establishment of the union breaks the separation of production, colleges, and research that haunts China's antibiotics union for a long time.
   As Yue Jin said, China's long-term planned economy model determined detailed division of work, specifying what companies and scientific research institutes should do respectively. At present, in the market economy system, market-oriented economy was established, and the adverse effects of the original division of work among companies and organizations were increasingly obvious: scientific research institutes stayed far away from commercial business, and therefore can not match with the actual market in studying direction, but gradually evolve to theoretical study, which takes the number of articles published on scientific research magazines as a criterion.
   Taking China's antibiotic industry as an example, manufacturing companies are undoubtedly inferior to scientific research institutes in the aspect of doing scientific research. It was obviously impotent for the companies to resort to technical innovation by means of poor research sources. "From process of fermentation, selection and determination of microbial strain, way of separating and purifying, protection of environment, and so on, each antibiotic manufacturer has to pay attentions to these processes in the full chain. Meanwhile, the fund invested by Chinese companies is relatively smaller compared with the mature companies in developed countries, but with more redundant R&D among companies." Yue Jin said, "We establish the antibiotic union in order to eliminate the separation of production, teaching, and research and achieve sustainable development, and this is our firm and unswerving object."
    The establishment of the union created a vital chance for improving China's overall industrial level and strengthening China's discourse power in the global market.
    The established union operation organization supported the whole conception. The union has its council, and engages 15 corporate members including four pharmaceutical companies such as CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Limited, Shandong Lukang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., etc. and six universities such as East China University of Science and Technology and Tianjin University, etc., and four research institutes such as the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS), etc.. The council