Zhu Hailuan, the Vice President of Sanofi China, told GDToday that the company has planned to introduce 25 innovative drugs and indications to the Chinese mainland between 2020 and 2025, when participating in the launching ceremony of the “Invest in China Year” on March 28 in Guangzhou.

Due to the Hong Kong and Macao Medicine and Equipment Connect, a trialled policy implemented in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in 2021, “Sanofi’s latest innovative drugs can enter the Chinese mainland for the first time, which is also very attractive to our innovation-driven industry force,” Zhu explained.

Earlier in the month, one of Sanofi’s latest drugs was approved to be introduced into The Hong Kong University - Shenzhen Hospital.

According to Zhu, due to the broader international cooperation platform in the GBA, Sanofi China’s introduction speed has been prioritized over their schedules.

As a world-leading medical and healthcare company, Sanofi has been in Guangdong since 1993, when its first regional office was set up in Guangzhou. Now China has become Sanofi’s second biggest market globally.

Therefore, Sanofi has “increased the input for key parts in the industrial chain, including R&D and production”. Zhu introduced that, at present, Sanofi has established three production bases in China, with a vaccine factory in Shenzhen. “It is the first and only local production base in China,” she emphasized.

Based on these, Sanofi established the GBA Vaccine Innovation Center with the Shenzhen Municipal Government in 2020, to promote the R&D of vaccines and help strengthen cooperation and exchanges in vaccine public defence between China and France.

Zhu indicated that China is becoming an increasingly important market for global medical R&D. Moreover, with more policies for the biomedical industry in recent years, Sanofi has seen a lot of space for the bio-pharmaceutical industry, Zhu said.

Previously, Guangdong has worked out a five-year action plan for the biomedicine and health industry, one of the province’s strategic pillar industry clusters, proposing that the operating income of Guangdong’s biomedical industry will reach 1 trillion RMB by 2025.

Reported by Alice, Eastbrook

Video by Eastbrook, Zoey

Edited by Wing, Olivia, Nan, James