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18 years ago, on August 28, 2006, at the world's first cervical cancer vaccination site in Queensland, Australia, a young Chinese teenager took a photo with Professor Ian Fraser.

The boy’s name is Zhou Zixi, and his father is Zhou Jian, one of the main contributors to the cervical cancer vaccine.

Dr. Zhou Jian is a virology expert and his wife Sun Xiaoyi is an immunology expert.

The combination of the two was a perfect match, and HPV virus particles were synthesized for the first time. This provided the most critical contribution to the subsequent large-scale development of cervical cancer vaccines. Unfortunately, he died in 1999 at the age of 42 due to overwork.

The invention of the cervical cancer vaccine is a process of continuous progress.

The first person to promote this work was Harald zur Hausen.

He was born in 1936 and grew up in an industrial area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Hausen came to the United States at the end of 1965. The following year, he began working in the laboratory of Professor Werner Henle, an immunologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. In 1972, Hausen took up his post at the newly established Institute of Clinical Virology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and shifted his research direction to the study of the causes of cervical cancer. In 1974, Hausen first proposed the hypothesis that long-term chronic infection with HPV can cause cervical cancer. In 1974, the research team discovered HPV particles in cervical cancer cells. In 1981, Hausen discovered a new subtype of HPV-6, and the following year discovered HPV-11, but it was still impossible to fully prove that cervical cancer was caused by HPV. After several years of dedicated searching, the team finally discovered HPV-16 and HPV-18 in 1983 and 1984, respectively. About 70% of cervical cancer samples contain one of these two viruses.

So far, Hausen and his team have confirmed that HPV virus is the main cause of cervical cancer. In May 2023, Hausen, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, died at his home in Heidelberg, Germany at the age of 87.

Zhou Jian and Professor Ian Fraser of the University of Queensland in Australia took over and turned Hausen's research results into reality.

After Zhou Jian passed away, Frazier chose to work with Merck to develop an HPV vaccine. Using Zhou Jian's technology, they spent 25 years to finally mass-produce the world's first cervical cancer vaccine.

This is the first time in human history that a cancer has been conquered.

1. Merck's exclusive agent, Zhifei Bio

It was not until 2017 that Merck's HPV vaccine was launched in China, and the agent of the product was Zhifei Bio.

In the past ten years, many women from mainland China went to Hong Kong for vaccination.

Data source: Tonghuashun iFind

Judging from the data, after the volume began to increase in 2018, Zhifei Bio's performance was like riding on a hot air balloon.

Why did it decline in 2022?

The reason is simple: domestically produced HPV vaccine has been launched.

2. The birth of domestic HPV vaccine

When Zhou Jian succeeded in synthesizing HPV virus in the laboratory, Xia Ningshao, who was only one year younger than him, was conducting research on hepatitis C at Loudi Central Hospital and won the second prize of Hunan Science and Technology Progress Award in 1993.

In 1994, Xiamen University made an exception and recruited Xia Ningshao, who had a secondary technical school degree, as an associate researcher. It established a virology research group to conduct special research on AIDS testing.

In 1999, the year Zhou Jian passed away, Xia Ningshao developed the country's first third-generation HIV antibody diagnostic kit and won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award.

Afterwards, Xia Ningshao led his team to spend 14 years studying the hepatitis E virus. In 2012, the domestically produced hepatitis E vaccine was successfully launched.

At the same time, since 2003, Xia Ningshao's team has worked with Wantai Biological to develop HPV vaccines.

In 2019, Wantai Biological's bivalent HPV vaccine was officially launched on the market.

Unlike GlaxoSmithKline's bivalent HPV vaccine, which uses eukaryotic cell expression to make the vaccine, Wantai Bio uses prokaryotic bacteria such as Escherichia coli for expression.

On the one hand, it breaks through the limitations of patents, and on the other hand, it greatly reduces costs.

Data source: Tonghuashun iFind

Wantai Biological's Xinkening costs 329 yuan per injection, and the full course requires two injections (three injections are required for those over the age limit).

Three doses of GlaxoSmithKline's bivalent vaccine cost 1,740 yuan.

Since the bivalent vaccine is mainly purchased through medical insurance, the relatively low price greatly reduces the cost of medical insurance.

However, the good times did not last long. As we can see, 2022 is a turning point for both Zhifei and Wantai.

What happened in 2023?

3. Watson Bio is in a frenzy

Watson Bio has been announcing that it is developing HPV vaccines, which has given investors a lot of expectations.

However, it was not until 2022 that the company's bivalent vaccine was officially launched on the market, called Wozehui.

Under the heavy pressure of imported vaccines and Wantai Xinkening, Watson Wozehui can hardly see the direction of profitability.

So, they decided to go all out and started a price-cutting frenzy.

In May 2022, in Nanjing centralized procurement, Wozehui won the bid with a unit price of 246 yuan per unit, and Xinkening won the bid with a unit price of 329 yuan per unit.

In the Guangdong centralized procurement in July 2023, Xinkening won the bid at 116 yuan per vial.

In March 2024 Jiangsu centralized procurement, Xinkening won the bid at 86 yuan per vial.

In the Hainan centralized procurement in May 2024, Wo Zehui won the bid at 63 yuan per unit.

In August 2024 Shandong centralized procurement, Wozehui won the bid at 27.5 yuan per unit.

From the normal selling price of more than 300 yuan to the collective purchase price of more than 20 yuan, the price of the bivalent HPV vaccine has skyrocketed.

Data source: Tonghuashun iFind

Because of the ups and downs in its performance and business strategies, as well as the impact of the financial fraud scandal, compared with its peers, Watson Bio looks naive and has never made any money.

The 2023 annual report shows that revenue decreased by 19.12% year-on-year to 4.114 billion yuan, and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company decreased by 42.44% year-on-year to 419 million yuan.

4. Thoughts on the King of Rolls

People often complain that an industry in Europe and the United States has been able to rely on high gross profit margins for decades, and the practitioners have a good life.

When Chinese companies made a breakthrough, they drove prices down to rock-bottom levels, disrupting the market without making any money themselves.

Xingkongjun thinks that this matter should be viewed dialectically. When Europe and the United States are enjoying the good life, only a very small number of foreign employees can enjoy the soup. They are very few in number, but they have great voice and can often control high-end voice channels such as Douban and LinkedIn.

The vast majority of ordinary people can only work as bricklayers with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan.

After the breakthrough of Chinese enterprises, on the surface it still appears to be 996, wages have not changed much, but the number of people employed has increased.

For example, BYD still has a monthly salary of 8,000 yuan, but ten years ago BYD had only 180,000 employees, and now it has 700,000 employees.

In addition, there is a huge overseas market.

Do you think that populous developing countries can afford the bivalent vaccine from Merck and GlaxoSmithKline that costs hundreds of dollars, or the bivalent vaccine from Chinese companies that costs 27.5 yuan?