On the morning of September 19, International Oncology Drugs Roadshow of 2018 China BioMed Innovation and Investment Conference (2018 CBIIC), co-hosted by China Pharmaceutical Innovation and Research Development Association (PhIRDA) and National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR), was successfully held in Suzhou. 7 pharmaceutical innovative oncology drugs projects from the United States and Germany were presented in this event, drawing great attention from pharmaceutical industry and investment. The recruitment for the roadshow initiated half a year ago, and the final 7 projects presented were chosen after selective screening and evaluation. American representatives came to Suzhou from miles away, looking forward to find matching partners and investors through the influential conference and platform.

Plenary Meeting of International Oncology Drugs Roadshow

The opening address was delivered by Dr. Ba Sujuan, the President & COO of NFCR. As one of the largest and most renowned not-for-profit association for cancer research in the United States, NFCR always commits itself to funding global cancer-related projects, including prevention, early diagnosis and innovative therapy, as well as innovative pharmaceutical research and clinical trials. NFCR is also dedicated to providing international cooperation. Since its establishment in 1973, NFCR has provided financial support to many labs across the world achieving remarkable results. In recent years, two programs have been carried out to accelerate cancer research, GBM AGILE and a plan to establish a fund. GBM AGILE (Glioblastoma Multiform Adaptive Global Innovative Learning Environment) is a groundbreaking adaptive clinical trial initiative designed to develop new and better treatments for glioblastoma multiform, a fatal brain cancer. And the fund is to support cancer R&D, involving not only academic laboratory and fundamental researches, but also promising start-up companies, to facilitate extensive collaboration and dialogue within laboratories, innovative oncology-research enterprises and investors around the world. NFCR hopes to bring life-saving drugs to the public.

Dr. Ba Sujuan made opening remarks

In the first half session, Dr. Amir Jafri, CEO of Immunicom, Inc., introduced Immunopheresis™ technology, a new approach  developed by Immunicom for treating cancer and other terminal diseases through a blood filtering device, which was approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as Breakthrough Device. Bernard Huber, CEO of ORYX GmbH & Co. KG, introduced ParvOryx, a project owned by the company with exclusive licence. ParvOryx is an oncolytic parvovirus H1 (H-1PV) that has the ability to infect and lyse human tumor cells from a wide variety of cancers. It has been proved in clinical trials that ParvOryx has a safe and strong efficacy in patients with recurrent glioblastoma and metastatic pancreatic cancer.

The second half of the session was presided by Dr. Tina Yu, the Managing Partner of YuanMing Capital. Dr. Ashok Saluja, Dr. David Kaysen, Dr. Alfred Slanetz, Dr. Lynda Chin and Dr. Sanjeev Luther respectively introduced the products, treatment, team and research results they had made.

Dr. Tina Yu

Roadshow Speakers

At the end of the session, Dr. Michael Wang, Chief Scientific Officer of NFCR delivered a keynote speech titled “Adaptive Innovative Medical High-Impact Initiatives Program (AIMHI)”, whose purpose is to support medical Initiatives and R&D with great influence and innovation.

Dr. Michael Wang

After the roadshow, a number of American enterprises found their potential partners successfully. In the future, a further collaboration will be established between China and the United States to deepen cooperation, to push forward the cooperation between China and the United States in oncology research and development, pharmaceutical industry and investment, to optimize the cooperation mechanism, to promote global pharmaceutical innovation jointly and make contributions to human health.