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summary:Currently, there are several new projects under transformation across the school, involving an amount of more than 500 million yuan.

"There is the Medicine Valley in the east and the Medical Device Valley in the west." The first phase of the "Shanghai Medical Device Valley" Science and Technology Park covers an area of ​​30 mu, and the area of ​​medical device-related laboratories is about 60,000 square meters. As the saying goes, "the one who is close to the water gets the moon first." This park, located next to the Jiading campus of Ruijin Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, has attracted seven major research institutes and joint laboratories, including the Surui Robot Joint Training Center and the Medical Chip Research Institute, to settle in since its opening three quarters. Many of their "managers" are young entrepreneurs with medical backgrounds.

Medical chip.

Doctors are also starting businesses, and hospitals are also designing chips. Behind this phenomenon is the first batch of Shanghai universities and other scientific research institutions' empowerment reform of achievement transformation, which has entered the "deep water zone", greatly encouraging researchers to "be willing to transform", "dare to transform" and "know how to transform". The latest data from the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission shows that in the first half of 2024, 62 empowerment achievements were completed or in progress, with a transformation amount of 809 million yuan, and 50 companies were promoted to promote scientific researchers to start their own businesses or make compliance rectifications.

Professor Zhang Xiongwen in the laboratory.

[Don’t want to transfer? Reduce the burden on both patients and scholars]

"Only by transforming scientific and technological achievements can the innovative value be truly realized. Failure to transform them is the biggest loss." In the pilot reform of Shanghai's scientific and technological achievements transformation and innovation, major universities and research institutes have launched a series of new reforms. In June this year, East China Normal University established a set of mechanisms such as empowerment reform of scientific and technological achievements transformation and due diligence exemption, focusing on solving the problem of "not daring to transform", "not knowing how to transform" and "not willing to transform" scientific research achievements within the school from multiple aspects such as management system, professional team and intellectual property rights.

Also in the field of biomedicine, a small molecule original new drug in the preclinical stage was successfully launched overseas this summer for the main complications of patients with various malignant tumors. It was successfully developed by the scientific research team of East China Normal University and Fudan University, and the results were transformed, and a global rights cooperation with the American biopharmaceutical company Supercede Therapeutics with a total amount of US$100 million was reached.

As the team leader, Professor Zhang Xiongwen of the Shanghai Engineering Research Center for Molecular Therapy and New Drug Creation of East China Normal University said, "We are studying universal treatments for most cancer patients. I have been thinking and researching this field for ten years." The new oral small molecule drug developed by the team is a targeted inhibitor that can block related signaling pathways on the skeletal muscle cell membrane, reduce muscle atrophy, improve grip strength, and relieve the various symptoms of tumor cachexia.

Reporters from Jiefang Daily and Shangguan News learned that this original drug not only fills the gap in global anti-cancer drug varieties, but its market price is expected to be only one-third of traditional large-molecule antibody drugs, making it affordable for ordinary patients.

It is worth mentioning that in order to promote the smooth implementation of this major transformation project, the school has equipped itself with results transformation specialists, opened up a green channel for approval, and relevant functional departments have jointly built a "one thing done at one time" full-process closed framework, which efficiently completed the entire transformation procedure and reduced the burden on the scientific research team to the greatest extent.

Big Zero Bay Park. Photo by Xu Ruizhe

[Don’t dare to transfer? Give teachers 100% ownership of their work achievements]

Before coming to work at ECNU, Zhang Xiongwen had been engaged in tumor-targeted drug development for a long time in pharmaceutical companies. He believes that the ability to transform research results is as important as scientific research and teaching ability. We should not ignore the importance of basic research, nor should we only focus on publishing papers and ignore social needs and industrial applications. In reality, scientists who study in ivory towers are inevitably worried about improper pricing of scientific and technological achievements, failure of transformation, and even the loss of state-owned assets.

To this end, the reform pilot universities have established a due diligence exemption mechanism, clarified the responsible parties, scope of responsibility, scope of exemption, methods of exemption, negative lists and other matters in the process of transformation of scientific and technological achievements, formed a long-term mechanism that tolerates failure and encourages innovation, protected scientific researchers, managers and leaders involved in the transformation of achievements, optimized the transformation fault-tolerant system, and gave scientific researchers peace of mind and freedom to focus on innovation and entrepreneurship.

According to conventional operations, the transformation of scientific and technological achievements of universities can generally be carried out in three forms: transfer, licensing, and equity investment. However, the first two forms of transformation are equivalent to handing over the implementation to others; if scientific researchers want to control the intellectual property rights in their own hands and continuously carry out research and development and transformation, the best way is to set up their own company and use the intellectual property rights as equity investment.

According to a series of reform documents issued by East China Normal University, such as the "Implementation Opinions on Carrying out Innovation and Reform of Scientific and Technological Achievements Transformation to Further Stimulate Innovation and Entrepreneurship", the school explored and designed a transformation model of "empowerment first, payment later", which greatly stimulated the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of scientific researchers. It is reported that there are currently multiple new projects in the transformation process, involving an amount of more than 500 million yuan.

Vice President Shi Guoyue said that with this empowerment, the school can give teachers 100% ownership of their scientific and technological achievements, and then use them as shares to establish a company. At the same time, all the shares formed by the scientific and technological achievements will belong to the teachers, and the school will not hold any shares in the company in the traditional way. Teachers who start their own businesses only need to pay the school 30% of the price of the achievements within a certain period of time, and the longest time can be delayed to 10 years.

“Shanghai Mechanical Valley” Ruijin Innovation Center.

A closer look at technology.

[Can't transfer? Build a platform for innovative medical and nursing achievements and integrate industry and medicine]

At the Ruijin Innovation Center in the "Shanghai Medical Valley", Chen Chang spans the two major industries of biomedicine and integrated circuits, and his business card also has multiple positions. He is not only the director of the Medical Chip Research Institute of Ruijin Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, but also the founder of two companies, Shanghai Jinguan Technology Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Sige Biotechnology Co., Ltd.

When Chen Chang, a young scientist who returned from overseas, communicated with the endocrinologist of Ruijin Hospital, they hit it off immediately and jointly developed a large-scale and low-cost "non-invasive blood glucose meter" based on Raman spectroscopy technology. "Accuracy is a world-class difficulty of non-invasive blood glucose meters. We can accurately measure the molecular fingerprint spectrum of glucose in tissue fluid or capillaries, and use intelligent algorithms to obtain blood glucose values." In order to facilitate the development of more new products with medical staff, he opened his company in the Medical Valley Industrial Park and kept "running back and forth".

Shanghai and Jiading District have introduced a series of policies to encourage and protect medical staff innovation and the integration of industry and medicine. The Ruijin Innovation Center has improved the multi-level incentive mechanism of medical institutions in accordance with the new policy, and improved the profit-sharing mechanism, continuously promoting the organic combination of hospital self-research transformation and corporate transformation of medical research results, and building a virtuous mechanism of circular development in which R&D, production and promotion and application promote each other, incubating a number of high-level leading biomedical device companies.

Since last year, with the help of Ruijin University, Chen Chang led another team to establish the Medical Chip Research Institute, which is oriented to the national strategy of biotechnology and information technology (BT&IT). This new research institute jointly built by the institute and enterprises was co-built by Shanghai Institute of Micro-Technology and Jinguan Technology. In addition, six young entrepreneurs from different majors such as engineering, materials, medicine and computer science also worked together to build a medical materials center to create more practical medical biomaterials such as heart, bone and joint.

"We have mastered the world's leading design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, and application of silicon nitride-based bio-silicon photonics. We have built a rare chip and wafer-level testing and application laboratory in China that works in the visible to near-infrared range, and have applied for more than 100 patents." Chen Chang said that this is inseparable from the BT platform provided by the hospital and the professional support of the medical expert team. In their laboratory, we can see that they are developing medical-grade, household-grade, and wearable non-invasive blood glucose monitors from large to small, and have completed the transformation path from "1 to 10".