Shown here is an artist's rendition of the future Novartis Shanghai Campus in Zhangjiang High-Tech Park. Once completed, the campus will be home to the China Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. Photos Provided to China Daily

Scientists with the China Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research conduct pharmaceutical research.

A chemist conducts tests at the Novartis research arm in China. The new R&D campus under construction is a $1 billion investment.

For more than two decades, the Chinese economy has been growing at a spectacular rate.

Today it is the world's second-largest economy as measured by nominal GDP. It is rapidly transitioning from a manufacturing powerhouse fueled by low-cost labor and exports into an innovation economy driven by long-term investments in research and development.

This transformation is being supported by significant government investments in basic research that help to grow a talent pool of scientists from within China as well as to attract many Chinese scientists to return from abroad.

This commitment to innovation has caught the eye of the world's top pharmaceutical companies, all of which have established a presence in China in recent years.

One of the largest investments has been made by Swiss healthcare giant Novartis, which has committed $1 billion to the construction of a new R&D campus in Shanghai's Zhangjiang High-Tech Park.

Construction is well under way and once it is completed, the campus will be home to several Novartis divisions and the China Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.

"We came to China to get access to the deep talent pool of scientists here," said Mark Fishman, president of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, the company's global pharmaceutical research arm.

"The discovery of new medicines requires a long-term investment in bright scientists who are committed to helping patients, and the growing pool of talent in China is one of the best in the world," Fishman said.

Indeed, Novartis has one of largest long-term R&D investments in the industry. In 2012, the company spent more than $9.1 billion on R&D, accounting for 16 percent of the $56.7 billion in net sales it saw that year.

A significant part of this investment funds the work of the pharmaceutical research division with more than 6,000 scientists working at nine sites around the world.

They are pioneering drug research on complex networks of proteins inside human cells called molecular signaling pathways that is helping to develop new medicines.

The novel approach of discovery will hopefully one day change the practice of medicine.

This type of innovative research is being done in the company's research center in China, where more than 300 scientists are focused on discovering and developing medicines to treat diseases afflicting patients in the country.

"Our research focuses on cancers that are highly prevalent in China, particularly gastric cancer and hepatoma, which are indigenous to the Chinese population," said Li En, head of the China division of the Novartis research organization.

"We are also studying epigenetics and regenerative medicine and developing treatments for diseases associated with aging."

In addition, Novartis also sees great importance in traditional Chinese medicine. "We have the largest collection of natural products of any company," Li said. "We have been working with Chinese institutes to study TCM. It's a very important part of our efforts and part of the reason of course why we are in China."

The Chinese institute has also formed strong partnerships with the local scientific community on innovative research and drug discovery.

So far, the center has been working closely with more than 40 academic and biotech partners in China in such areas as cancer, infectious disease, epigenetics, genomics, and TCM.

One of the company's strategies is to look for new ways to combine its scientific knowledge and expertise with that of the local scientific community to find the shortest path to new treatments for disease.

These collaborations create mutually beneficial partnerships between Novartis and the scientists in China by providing training to local talent and helping to build drug discovery expertise in the Chinese scientific community.

"What makes us distinctive in China is that we are truly dedicated to discovery research," Fishman said.

"Our China research center is a fundamental basic science drug discovery institute that I believe will be equivalent in its fundamental science to any in the world

"It's a long-term commitment of Novartis to discovering novel drugs for patients in China and the world."

zhuanti@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 06/06/2013 page5)