Box 4. Box 4 Case study: Shenzhen Chipscreen Biosciences

Shenzhen Chipscreen Biosciences was founded in 2001 by several Chinese returnees with scientific and industrial experience in the United States. Chipscreen maintains two business foci: first, discovering and developing proprietary new drug candidates; and second, a full suite of research services from target identification to clinical trial evaluation of potential drug candidates for the life sciences industry. Through a research agreement with the Shenzhen Research Center for Small Molecule Drugs (Shenzhen), Chipscreen has an extensive pipeline of globally relevant therapeutics in development with indications against type 2 diabetes, lung cancer, colon cancer, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease (dyslipidemia). Chipscreen boasts a strong IP portfolio, including five composition matter patents applied for in the United States, and three that have been granted in the United States, including patents covering two clinical-stage compounds chiglitazar and chidamide. Finally, Chipscreen also owns three patents on data-mining and compound-analysis software. When founded, initial IP and financial investment were provided by CapitalBio (Beijing).

Chipscreen has opted to codevelop its product chidamide, a histone deacetylase inhibitor for the treatment of lung and colon cancer, with a United States partner: HUYA Biosciences (San Diego) (Table 5). On the service side of its business strategy, Chipscreen has a two-year collaborative agreement with Roche to provide contract research using its high-throughput screening and proprietary chemical genomics-based discovery platform to screen and evaluate a series of compounds provided by Roche's R&D Centre in China.

These examples illustrate how Chipscreen's management team has leveraged its experience abroad to establish strategic international partnerships in both the drug development and service arms of the business, while also positioning the company as a serious global player.