Wensong Tan: Riding the East Wind, Innovation + Breakthrough to Promote Antibody Vaccine Industry

On November 4, 2017, the First Industrial Development Forum of East China University of Science and Technology 2017, hosted by Shanghai Huali Asset Management Co., Ltd, was successfully held. Professor Wensong Tan, a Professor at East China University of Science and Technology and Chairman of BioEngine, was invited to attend the forum as a guest speaker. With the theme of "Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements, Serving Industrial Development", the forum invited more than 300 industry leaders, authoritative experts, and industry elites to discuss and explore the topics of industry-university-research cooperation, the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, incubation of entrepreneurial projects, green bio-manufacturing, college students' entrepreneurship, investment, and financing, etc., and deeply explore the development mode and path of university-industry under the new situation.

Professor Wensong Tan reported on the theme of "Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements to Promote the Development of Antibody Vaccine Industry" in the forum. In the report, Prof. Tan proposed that antibody and virus vaccines are important parts of the biomedical industry, which are related to people's health, food safety, and the development of the animal husbandry industry. At present, there are many new antibody drugs in foreign markets, and the domestic market has just opened a feast of ten billion antibody drugs. Domestic vaccine production technology is relatively backward, and the key technologies and specialized service platforms for efficient industrial production of antibody, recombinant protein, and virus vaccines are not mastered, and there is also a serious lack of engineering talents and insufficient cooperation between industry, academia, research and application, which affect the development of China's antibody and the virus vaccine industry.

The transformation from professor to the chairman of the board also represents the direction that Prof. Tan Wen Song has been striving for - the transformation from laboratory results to industrial production.

As an important member of the animal cell and tissue engineering team of East China University of Science and Technology, the animal cell and tissue engineering team led by Professor Wensong Tan has more than 30 years of disciplinary accumulation and practical experience and is committed to solving the key technologies of large-scale animal cell culture. With 30 years of experience, the team has achieved fruitful laboratory results, mastered many key technologies, participated in and completed more than 30 national and corporate key projects, obtained more than 30 authorized patents, owned more than 200 culture medium formulations, and trained numerous excellent professionals. 30 years of accumulation, this is Professor Tan's love and persistence, his pursuit of continuous exploration and breakthrough in the professional field.

As the chairman of Shanghai BioEngine Sci-Tech Co., Ltd, Prof. Tan focuses on the transformation of achievements, aims to serve and guarantee the development of antibody and virus vaccine industries in response to the urgent needs of China's bio-industry development, and focuses on the development of the company with the R&D and application service platform of key technologies for antibody vaccine pilot incubation and industrialization, and the implementation of localization of key raw materials and equipment. Now, we have built the first fusion protein drug production line for antibody manufacturers with a cell density of 10 million and reactor scale of 1,000 upgrades in China, and created the influenza vaccine production line based on MDCK cell serum-free high-density suspension culture process with the largest single scale in China for vaccine manufacturers, both of which are at the international leading level and have played an important role in demonstrating and promoting the development of antibody vaccine industry in China. In 2017, the pilot production system of the culture medium of BioEngine passed the EU BSI.13485:2016 quality management system certification, becoming the only culture medium manufacturing enterprise in China to obtain this certification. 

At the end of the report, talking about the future development of the antibody vaccine industry, Prof. Wensong Tan was confident: "At present, biopharmaceuticals are a major national strategic need, and antibody and virus vaccines will be an important driving force of the biopharmaceutical industry. The strong support from the state and the gradual emphasis on production technology have now created a good atmosphere for innovation and entrepreneurship in the whole society, which provides abundant opportunities and broad space for the development of the antibody and virus vaccine industry. In the future, we should ride on the east wind of the construction of science and innovation center, make continuous breakthroughs in the large-scale culture technology of animal cells, and actively explore the construction of a collaborative innovation system between industry, academia, research, and application to promote the development of antibody vaccine industry. This is exactly in line with the theme of this industry forum, and is our consistent desire and effort."