China Bio Law

A week ago a story with this headline came out: For the First Time, a Glioma – Brain Cancer – may be Eliminated by a Chinese Research/Medical Team, Using a Novel Stem Cell Base.

Some research on the story:

Cellonis Biotechnologies: this is the owner of the therapy that was used.  Their website says that they are a China-based company headquartered in Beijing, and they have more than five years of research for the five different stem cell therapies under their belt.  Their website is kind of interesting.  First, the title is in Chinese (北京弘润天源生物技术有限公司, Beijing Hongrun Tianyuan Biotechnologies Co., Ltd.; I don’t know whether Hongrun Tianya is a cultural reference, it literally means Great-Smooth-Sky-Source), but the entire site is in English.  My guess is that they are definitely targeting foreigners looking for treatment (e.g. the Norwegian guy).  That and the fact that there is this extremely annoying floating advertisement that you can’t click out of.

Next, I don’t know how new that website is, but the sections listing their Science Advisors,  Board of Directors, and Management are under construction.  Although the article does mention that their CEO is one Cindy Hao, M.D., and their “Director International” (Maybe International Director?) is Urs J. Lienert, M.B.A.

Third, it says that they’ve established working relationships with Clinical Research/Treatment Centers (i.e. hospitals), but there’s no listing of what any of these are.  I suppose if you’re a potential client they would give you that information, but I wonder if there’s a business reason for not listing your clinical collaborators?

Fourth, I don’t really know how to find information on companies, I suppose I’ll learn that eventually.  Googling the English name only gets you news about the company.  Googling the Chinese name gets you a ton of job listing sites, which actually provide more information on the company.  However, I’ll have to find a directory for Chinese companies eventually if I want more detailed information.  I wonder if they post company registration information publicly?  On this HR site (and others) their company is listed as a private company with between 50-99 employees, and it looks like they’re hiring for positions at their headquarters and locations in Guangzhou (probably related to a subsidiary they have in HK) and Jiujiang (Jiangxi Province).  There’s nothing about Jiangxi in their website, but those positions are related to manufacturing/production.  The HR spiel does mention that their manufacturing workshops have gone through the SFDA’s GMP approval process.  That website says the company was founded in 2009 with Beijing University technical teams at the core, and already having ~4 years of research.  It also says the HK subsidiary was established to facilitate international exchange and cooperation.

Hmm, maybe I’ll write a little more on the actual therapy tomorrow.  This company research was interesting, but took a little longer than I thought it would.  There really isn’t too much information about the company itself out there, in the future I’d like to compare it to a similar-size American company that offers similar treatments, if there are any at all.