New Update | Shengshi Taikang Honored with BIOCHINA Awards’ "2024 Innovation Breakthrough Enterprise" Award

Recently, at the BIOCHINA E-Trade Bio-Industry Conference, the organizers unveiled the BIOCHINA Awards 2024 list of corporate honors. Shengshi Taikang was awarded the "Innovation Breakthrough Enterprise" award in recognition of its outstanding achievements in the innovative pharmaceutical sector.

As a leading platform for biotechnology industry collaboration and exchange, the "BIOCHINA Awards 2024 – The 9th Yimao Annual Biotech Industry Selection" is organized by the BIOCHINA Committee in partnership with a professional judging panel. Guided by principles of fairness, impartiality, and transparency, the selection process involves a comprehensive evaluation based on multi-dimensional, real-world data, aiming to identify innovative forces within the biopharmaceutical sector and work collaboratively with outstanding companies to drive industry growth.

Shengshi Taikе earned this prestigious honor thanks to its milestone achievements in 2024, particularly the successful approval and commercial launch of Senglitin, a next-generation DPP-4 inhibitor and a first-in-class antidiabetic drug independently developed by the company, marking the beginning of its commercialization journey. At this year’s Bio Industry Conference, Dr. Yu Qiang, founder and CEO of the company, curated and chaired the sub-forum titled "Early Research and Clinical Development of Metabolic Disease Drugs," where he shared in detail the entire process of Senglitin—from its groundbreaking research phase through clinical trials—highlighting the scientific evolution of this innovative drug from the lab all the way to patients. He also engaged attendees in a lively discussion on key industry trends and clinical design considerations for metabolic medications.

The Journey of Developing Next-Generation DPP-4 Inhibitors

As one of the participants in the development of senglitin, Dr. Yanwu Ouyang, Director of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the company, shared insights into the drug’s R&D journey. As a next-generation, highly selective DPP-4 inhibitor, senglitin stands out due to its unique ability to form a stable co-crystal structure when bound to DPP-4, significantly enhancing the efficiency of drug-target interaction. This distinctive structural feature not only boosts senglitin’s potency but also improves its safety profile, making it particularly effective in helping adults with type 2 diabetes achieve better blood glucose control.

Dr. Ouyang Zhenwu also discussed with the guests the promising applications of DPP-4 inhibitors in areas such as oncology and Alzheimer’s disease. He noted that several commonly used DPP-4 inhibitor drugs have demonstrated notable anti-tumor effects in various animal models, suggesting that the mechanism likely involves "recruiting" specific immune cells into tumor tissues via the CXCR3-related signaling pathway, ultimately leading to the destruction of cancer cells.

Thanks to the company's extensive research and insights gained from its deep exploration of the DPP-4 target, it has now also positioned itself in the highly promising field of chemokine-targeted therapies with CGT-1881, a CXCR4 antagonist that has become a global hotspot. This project has nearly completed Phase I clinical trials, and clinical data have clearly demonstrated its strong potential for applications in stem cell mobilization and WHIM syndrome treatment. Notably, CGT-1881 marks the company’s first-ever New Drug Application submitted simultaneously in both China and the U.S., highlighting its significant future prospects. The compound holds immense potential across a wide range of therapeutic areas, including malignant tumors, stem cell mobilization, immune disorders, and genetic diseases, making it a product with substantial market value.

Precision, powerful efficacy, lasting compliance

Sotagliflozin broke new ground in the clinical trial landscape of this niche area during its clinical trial phase, becoming the first drug to advance directly from Phase 2 to Phase 3 without undergoing a second interim analysis. Dr. Jinmiao Lu, Director of Clinical Operations at Shengshi Taikang, shared insights at the forum on the clinical design of sotagliflozin, as well as the efficacy and safety data from its trials. In the Phase I trial of sotagliflozin, the company conducted a head-to-head study against the global benchmark product in the field, while also incorporating quantitative pharmacology modeling. Ultimately, based on robust preclinical and Phase I trial data, sotagliflozin received approval from the CDE, allowing it to skip Phase II and move straight into Phase III trials.

The Phase III clinical trial, led by Professor Li-Nong Ji, a renowned diabetes expert from Beijing People’s Hospital, has launched two pivotal studies in China, enrolling approximately 1,000 type 2 diabetes patients in total. These trials aim to evaluate the efficacy and safety of senglutide as monotherapy and in combination with metformin for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Notably, Professor Ji also attended the industry conference, where he shared insights from a clinical perspective on the unmet medical needs in metabolic disease treatments.

Phase III clinical results demonstrate that, in monotherapy, senglitin significantly reduced patients' HbA1c levels by 1.08%. After 24 weeks of treatment, 45% of patients achieved an HbA1c level below 7%, which was 3.5 times higher than the placebo group. For patients who had inadequate glycemic control with metformin monotherapy, adding senglitin further led to a substantial reduction in HbA1c—by as much as 1.23%. By week 24, the proportion of patients achieving an HbA1c level below 7% rose dramatically to 51%, again representing 3.5 times the rate observed in the placebo group.

Meanwhile, Dr. Lu Jinmiao also provided detailed data demonstrating that, in addition to its excellent blood sugar-lowering effects, Senglitin showed a similar incidence of adverse reactions in the 100-mg high-dose group compared to the placebo group during the subsequent 28 weeks—highlighting its safety profile and addressing a common concern associated with existing marketed products.

Dr. Jiahong Zhao, CMO and Clinical Head of Shengshi Taikang, also chaired the special session on "Metabolic Diseases" at the conference, joining Professor Linnong Ji and other experts in a roundtable discussion titled "Collaborative Efforts to Advance the Development and Translation of Metabolic Therapeutics." Dr. Zhao, who serves as an external expert at the National Medical Products Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and is also a member of the National Healthcare Security Administration’s expert panel, emphasized during the roundtable that China’s current national healthcare insurance system is characterized by broad coverage of the general population coupled with appropriately scaled payments—while also highlighting the need to carefully consider the overall cost of healthcare financing. He noted that the relatively low pricing of drugs negotiated under the current insurance framework has indeed dampened pharmaceutical companies’ enthusiasm for developing innovative new treatments. However, he added that policies already exist to safeguard innovative drug categories; it’s just that economic constraints have thus far limited their full implementation. Dr. Zhao expressed optimism that this situation will gradually improve alongside China’s ongoing economic growth, while also expressing hope that commercial health insurance schemes will increasingly integrate into the payment ecosystem, further enhancing and diversifying China’s healthcare financing system.

Shengshi Taikе is a biotechnology company in the commercialization phase, with its core product—a Class 1 innovative drug called Senglidiptin (formerly known as Shenglidiptin)—recently approved for market launch. Founded in 2010 in Suzhou Industrial Park, the company boasts a core team that brings together decades of international experience across the entire lifecycle of pharmaceutical products. Shengshi Taikе is dedicated to the research, development, and industrialization of high-quality, differentiated small-molecule innovative drugs. Leveraging an integrated drug R&D technology platform and a forward-thinking, multi-faceted business perspective, the company has built a robust pipeline of cutting-edge therapies spanning areas such as blood sugar control, cancer treatment, and autoimmune diseases.