Window to China
On average, there were 4 IPO per month, and nearly 90 % of the companies had VC/PE support. The original investment period of 8-10 years was reduced to about 3-5 years. Total funds raised reached over 200 billion yuan. China Bio news release, November 30, 2017
A biomedical engineer by education, Tao XU is presently Director of the Innovation Center of Instruments and Technologies for Life Sciences at CAS Beijing Institute of Life Sciences. His focus is on membrane and vesicle transport. Born in May 1970, he was a postdoc with Erwin Neher at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and with Bertil Hille at the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Washington University. In 1999, he returned to Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan where he had studied, and transferred to Beijing in 2009. On Nov. 27, 2017, Tao XU was appointed member of the CAS, together with 66 other scientists and engineers. China Bio news release, November 30, 2017
Der von der Regenerative Medicine Technology Co. und der Zhejiang University entwickelte Roboter besteht aus einem kompakten halbrunden Körper und einem Flachbildschirm. Der Benutzer scannt zuerst seinen QR-Code (WeChat) am oberen Rand des Displays, um sich mit dem Unternehmens zu verbinden, bringt dann die rechte Hand am Körper des Roboters in Position, und der Roboter beginnt mit der Messung des Pulses. Nach 2 Minuten generiert der Bildschirm einen medizinischen Bericht, der auch automatisch an das Mobiltelefon des Benutzers gesendet wird. 8,6 für die Organe und 8,4 für die Verdauung…”: der Bericht rankt jedes physiologische System des Körpers bis zu 10 Punkten. In einem Dropdown-Menü wird in einem medizinische Bericht der Gesundheitszustand des Benutzers für jedes Organ angezeigt, mit Konditionierungsempfehlungen. Selbst trockene Augen und andere kleine Probleme werden so identifiziert. Der Roboter sammelt bioelektrische Daten von Pulspunkten und erstellt den medizinischen Bericht auf der Grundlage einer big data Analyse, die auf den klinischen Daten von 280.000 Menschen basiert. Die Genauigkeit soll 94% betragen. Das Unternehmen will versuchen, diese Analyse mit den “500 TCM-Behandlungen” des chinesischen Arzneibuchs zu kombinieren. Für China mit seinem in weiten ländlichen Bereichen noch unterentwickelten medizinischen Versorgungssystem, aber einer guten Satellit-gestützten Internetversorgung, passen derartige Konzepte der Telemedizin sehr gut.
According to a CFDA law amendment brought to congress vote, certification of drugs in China might be simplified in the future: 1. permission for manufacture and GMP certificate will be combined in one certificate, and 2. permission for storage (GSP = good storage practice certificate) and sales will also be combined in another certificate. Thus, if approved by congress, GMP and GSP will in future be combined with manufacturing and sales certificate (information by XIONG Xin) China Bio news release, November 29, 2017
Cyanobacteria such as Synechococcus sp. PCC 7942 overproduce sucrose to achieve osmotolerance in saline solution. The teams around Xuefeng LU and Quan LUO at CAS Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT), in collaboration with Martin Hagemann at Rostock University, Germany, identified protein Slr1588 as a transcriptional regulator for sucrase activity of the spsA gene, a key enzyme involved in sucrose synthesis and found that glycogen and sucrose pools were closely linked. Their results suggest that glycogen could serve as a supportive rather than a competitive carbon pool for the synthesis of sucrose, and could guide metabolic engineering to optimize the production of sucrose and other products by cyanobacteria. CAS QIBEBT news release, November 27, 2017
The genus Allium (Liliaceae) contains hundreds of species, including onion, garlic, scallion, shallot, leek, and chives, many of them have the smell of garlic and are economically important as crops, medicinal or ornamental plants. The majority of over 500 Allium species are native to the Northern Hemisphere, while a few species are distribute in tropical and subtropical regions. The Global Allium Garden will be composed of a Kunming Center and a Tashkent Center. The Kunming Botanical Garden, KIB, covers an area of 3,700 square meters (5.5 acres) and is designed in line with circumstances to create a natural type landscape. CAS news release, November 23, 2017
The robot developed by Regenerative Medicine Technology Co. consists of a compact body and a flat panel display. The user first scans the QR code at the top of the display to connect to the enterprise public number, then affixes the right hand to the body, and the robot begins to measure pulse. After 2 minutes, the screen generates a medical report, automatically sent to the user’s mobile phone. 8.6 for organs and 8.4 for digestion …” The report provides scores up to 10 for each of the body’s physiological systems. In a drop-down menu, the medical report also details the user’s health status of each organ, profile, conditioning advice. Even dry eyes and other small problems are “found” by intelligent robots. The robot collects bioelectric data from pulse points, and generates the medical report based on big data analysis based on the clinical data of 280,000 people. Accuracy is said to be 94%. The company will attempt to combine this analysis with the „500 TCM treatments“ of the Chinese pharmacopoeia.” China Bio news release, November 23, 2017
Hainan Airlines flight HU497 departed from Beijing Capital Airport on Nov. 21 and landed 11 hrs later at Chicago O’Hare in the USA. It carried 186 passengers and 15 crew members. The biofuel used (Sinopec No. 1 jet fuel) was processed from coconut, palm, Jatropha, linseed and other vegetable oils, as well as from microalgae oil, cooking oil and animal fat, and approved by CAAC. China at present consumes about 30 million tons of aviation fuel and strives to drop the average annual energy consumption per unit passenger by more than 15% by 2020. China Industrial Biotechnology Network, November 22, 2017
Using algae such as Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Nannochloropsis and others, the group of Jian XU at CAS Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioproess Technology (QIBEBT) has succeeded to quantify, label-free, the amount of starch, protein and triacylglycerol in single microalgal cells. Analysis is based on 13 specific Raman peaks. It works under high throughput and from different cell preservation states such as liquid suspension cultures, thawed wet algae preserved at -80 ° C and freeze-dried algal flour. China Industrial Biotechnology Network, November 23, 2017
The map is based on recordings in 2015 and has a resolution of 30 m by 30 m per pixel, 100 times clearer than the 300 m by 300 m per pixel resolution of landsat. The map documents that forests, grasslands and desert cover more than 82 % of the area earmarked for the Belt and Road Initiative, making it difficult to build connecting roads. It also found pockets of water reserves along the initiative, yet some of them are overused for agriculture, meaning the initiative has a potential risk of water shortages and environmental degradation. As for solar energy, the Arabian Peninsula, Iran’s plateaus, the Sahara, and central Australia are prime locations for large-scale solar farms. India, Southeast Asia and southeastern China are less favorable, despite having warm climates, because of dense vegetation, cloud coverage and a mediocre solar exposure rate. Next year, China will publish greenhouse gas data collected from the recently launched Fengyun 3D meteorological satellite, contributing more to the global effort in combating climate change. CAS news release, November 22, 2017