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Lizhu won the second prize of the Provincial Science and Technology Award.
Release time:
2015-02-28
Lizhu won the second prize of the Provincial Science and Technology Award.
In mid-January, our city's leading pharmaceutical company, Lizhu Group, celebrated its 30th anniversary. At the provincial science and technology innovation conference held more than a month later, its project "Research and Industrialization of the New Reproductive Drug Urinary Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH)" won the second prize of the 2014 Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology Award, marking a "good start" for Lizhu's new journey as it turns 30.
Urinary Follicle Stimulating Hormone is a glycoprotein extracted from the urine of postmenopausal women, which promotes the proliferation and differentiation of follicular granulosa cells and supports the growth and development of the entire ovary. Its lyophilized powder injection is widely used in the treatment of infertility and is an irreplaceable ovulation-stimulating drug in the treatment of ovulation disorder infertility, especially in in vitro fertilization.
The person in charge of the research and industrialization project of Lizhu's new reproductive drug Urinary Follicle Stimulating Hormone introduced to reporters that due to its complex production process and high technical difficulty, only a few foreign companies such as Switzerland's Serono and Ibsa produce Urinary Follicle Stimulating Hormone worldwide. In the 1980s, China gradually began to use imported FSH drugs clinically. However, imported drugs are expensive, with the average cost of a treatment course exceeding 7,500 yuan, placing a significant economic burden on patients.
As early as 1998, Lizhu Group's Lizhu Pharmaceutical Factory began researching Urinary Follicle Stimulating Hormone, determined to break the monopoly of foreign pharmaceutical companies in the high-end product market of reproductive assistance, allowing more Chinese infertility patients to access high-quality and affordable ovulation-stimulating drugs. At the same time, Lizhu could also expand its market in the field of reproductive drugs and showcase its capabilities.
In 2006, Lizhu's Urinary Follicle Stimulating Hormone officially went into production. Comparative studies have proven that its efficacy, purity, and other quality indicators are comparable to imported products within its shelf life. Moreover, Lizhu has also researched and established the national quality standards for Urinary Follicle Stimulating Hormone. The price of Lizhu's Urinary Follicle Stimulating Hormone is only two-thirds of that of imported products, significantly reducing the medication burden on patients.
As of now, Lizhu's Urinary Follicle Stimulating Hormone remains the only high-end ovulation-stimulating drug produced domestically. The aforementioned person in charge stated that as of May 2014, it had sold a cumulative total of 10.39 million vials, benefiting approximately 416,000 infertility patients and saving them about 1.04 billion yuan in economic costs. Its market share has also increased year by year, rising from 3.2% in 2006 to 35.3% in 2013, gradually replacing imported products.
Over the past thirty years, Lizhu has adhered to a sustainable development path that combines research and innovation with marketing-driven strategies, becoming a star at the national, provincial, and municipal science and technology award conferences. In 2013, Lizhu's original new drug Aiprazole research and industrialization project won the first prize for provincial scientific and technological progress. Five years earlier, Lizhu's Shenqi Fuzheng injection won the first prize for scientific and technological progress in Guangdong Province. Just at the end of last year, Lizhu's invention and application of antiviral granules for new infectious diseases won the first prize at the 2014 Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Award Conference.
Now that Lizhu has "stood firm at thirty," it is about to fully relocate to a new factory this year, entering a new stage of development. In the process of becoming a leading modern pharmaceutical enterprise domestically and internationally, innovation-driven remains the key word for Lizhu. Reporters learned that Lizhu is currently undergoing a strategic transformation, maintaining its existing advantageous fields while expanding, and quickly entering the forefront of monoclonal antibodies and vaccines, which represent the current and future directions of international pharmaceutical development. (Zhuhai Special Zone Reporter Liao Mingshan)
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