Recently, Jiang Lingfeng, deputy to the National People's Congress and vice chairman of Zhifei Bio, said in an exclusive interview with the Shanghai Securities News that at this year's National People's Congress, he made suggestions on topics such as optimizing the ecology and structure of the biopharmaceutical industry.

Solve the dilemma of vaccine companies' difficulty in collecting payments

Public data shows that in the first three quarters of 2024, the average accounts receivable turnover days of listed vaccine companies reached 381 days, an increase of more than 60% over 2022, and the accounts receivable of 11 listed vaccine companies accounted for 107% of their revenue. "Vaccine R&D investment is large, the cycle is long, and the risk is high, requiring a large amount of R&D resources. In recent years, the difficulty of vaccine companies in collecting payments has brought huge pressure on the industry's capital chain, and the industry's sustainable development faces severe challenges." Jiang Lingfeng said.

my country's non-immunization program vaccines adopt a "one-ticket system" circulation model. Enterprises directly supply to district and county CDCs, but the payment needs to be circulated through multiple links such as vaccination clinics, CDCs, and finance. In actual operations, problems such as delayed bill circulation and poor system docking occur frequently, and some areas even have cross-year arrears. At the same time, some county-level CDCs have not set up special accounts for vaccines, which has exacerbated the risk of arrears.

In this regard, Jiang Lingfeng suggested that relevant departments urge the establishment of a disease control payment system and build a new "special fund direct payment" mechanism to promote the strict implementation of provinces that have issued policies on special funds for non-immunization program vaccines, and regions that have not issued policies to speed up the formulation of implementation rules, and promote CDCs at all levels to pay vaccine companies in a timely manner to help companies develop healthily and sustainably.

Support the development of the biopharmaceutical industry in the west

In recent years, the Chengdu-Chongqing region has attached great importance to the development of the biopharmaceutical industry and actively carried out cooperation in the biopharmaceutical industry in terms of R&D collaboration, production collaboration and circulation collaboration. At present, 6,700 biopharmaceutical-related enterprises have been gathered, including more than 40 listed companies and nearly 60 national-level specialized "little giant" enterprises. The total scale of the cluster exceeds one trillion yuan, of which the revenue of biopharmaceutical industry above designated size is 270 billion yuan, accounting for about 9.1% of the country.

"The imbalance of regional development not only restricts the transformation and upgrading of the industry, but also affects the overall effectiveness of the national strategy." Jiang Lingfeng bluntly stated that compared with the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze River Delta, Chengdu and Chongqing still have obvious shortcomings in terms of review and approval efficiency, batch issuance capacity, and the speed of innovative drugs entering hospitals.

Jiang Lingfeng believes that we can learn from the successful experience of the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and other regions, establish the Chengdu-Chongqing branch of the National Drug and Medical Device Review Center, open a priority channel for Class I new drugs, and accelerate domestic substitution, which is also conducive to promoting the transformation of drug and medical device achievements in the region, industrial agglomeration, and innovative development.

Jiang Lingfeng suggested that relevant policies should be introduced to support the drug inspection institutes and other relevant institutions in the Chengdu-Chongqing area to apply for the batch release qualification of relevant drugs, shorten the inspection cycle of clinical trial samples, and speed up the research and development progress. "At the same time, to cultivate and introduce talents, it is necessary to gather talents with policies, promote innovation with talents, and build a full-chain ecology of 'research and development-transformation-application'." Jiang Lingfeng said.

Expand the international influence of China's innovative biological drugs

Jiang Lingfeng said that Zhifei Bio has always adhered to the innovation strategy of "independent research and development as the main, cooperative research and development as the auxiliary, and investment incubation as the supplement", and continued to increase research and development investment and enhance innovation.

According to reports, the company has built an innovation incubation center in Beijing, which brings together more than 100 top technical talents from well-known universities and research institutes across the country, focusing on the cutting-edge fields of the industry, carrying out original innovation, and striving to break through key technologies to provide underlying technical support for the research and development of more innovative products.

Jiang Lingfeng told reporters that in recent years, Zhifei Bio has continuously deepened its globalization strategy and further expanded the international influence of China's innovative biological drugs.

In Jiang Lingfeng's view, in order to lay a solid foundation for a healthy China and consolidate the growth engine of the west, biopharmaceutical companies in the Chengdu-Chongqing region should actively cultivate new quality productivity and accelerate scientific research. "As an industry leader, Zhifei Bio will continue to deepen innovation and contribute to the high-quality development of the biopharmaceutical industry."

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