Arterial Network reporter interviewed Dr. Zhou Wei (right)

Shengjie Technology, a company with low reputation in China.

But it,

Founded by Chinese scientists;

Carrying the name of the world's third high-intensive gene chip R&D manufacturer;

Has the only molecular diagnostic laboratory in the United States that specializes in eye diseases;

Meet the elites of Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine;

Soon after, they will come to shake the Chinese market.

In July, Hong Kong was changeable. After a torrential rain, it ushered in a round of sunshine. On such an afternoon, the arterial network reporter "date" at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong, the founding of the life sciences technology that had just arrived from the United States. Dr. Zhou Wei, the person and CEO, chatted with the older, very talkative American scientist about him and his Biotech.

In 2009, Zhou Wei left the famous American technology law firm and founded the company. The company's main business is the production and development of high-density gene chips. At present, only three companies in the world have such capabilities. In addition to the company, the other two are the famous Thermo Fisher and Illumina.

"I am fortunate to participate in the development and industrialization of a generation of chips, and the production line is also configured by our team." Zhou Wei said. The management team of Shengjie is regarded as the “old rivers and lakes” in the industry. Most of its main members are from the Angfei chip (acquired by Thermo Fisher in 2016).

This experience at Angfei is crucial for Zhou Wei. Zhou Wei graduated from Stanford University. According to his recollection, when he first arrived at Stanford University for 9 months, the school found him. He said that there is a startup company that suits him and asks if he wants to see it. This company was an Aofei that was still in its infancy, and it was a coincidence that Zhou Wei joined the company and grew up with it.

At that time, the CEO of Angfei gave a speech on the theme: a hundred steps to synthesize the entire genome, depicting the great potential of combining semiconductor technology with genomic technology. "At the time, I didn't want to do anything. I just wanted to do genomics." Zhou Hao was very excited after listening.

When he first entered Aofei, he entered the legal department and was responsible for intellectual property work. Since he was the only vice president who spoke Chinese in the team, Zhou Yu became a general manager of China from a legal and technology management staff. "The Chinese market also needs people. They ask me if I can handle it, so I will take care of it." Zhou Wei said.

“I didn’t do a lot of market work before that. Aofei gave me a lot of opportunities to exercise.” Under the leadership of Zhou Wei, Aofei and Tsinghua University established the first Sino-US biochip joint development project. .

After leaving Angfei, Zhou Wei joined the Wilson Law Firm as a partner. This is a leading high-tech law firm specializing in intellectual property, corporate law, corporate listings, corporate mergers and other services for technology companies such as Apple and Google. The law firm provided a lot of support for the creation of the subsequent life sciences.

For start-up companies, it is very difficult to develop chips. At the beginning, Shengjie Technology did not think that it must be a chip. "The goal of the company is to develop more accurate sequencing technology, we need a special sequencing chip." Zhou Wei analyzed.

At the beginning, Zhou Wei thought about communicating with Angfei, and hoped that Angfei could develop such a product. But at that time, Angfei did not have extra energy, and Shengjie could only do it by himself. "With such an opportunity, we started doing it," he continued.

Subsequently, Shengjie Technology acquired some of the assets of the chemical laboratory and chemical research institute of Angfei, saving a lot of time and economic costs of investment and construction. In addition, the team members also have a former head of the Angfei production line. In this way, people and equipment are all together.

The company's main business is to produce its own high-density sequencing chip for 2D or 3D sequencing of long-chain DNA.

Compared to PCR chips, high-density chip probes are very high-profile and can test multiple molecular patterns simultaneously. Ordinary PCR chips do not exceed a maximum density of 5,000, while high-density chips can reach 25 million.

"PCR chips are still very important in the diagnostic market in the United States, but our chips can largely replace it." Zhou Wei said, "The biggest difference is density, and the high-density chip itself can detect."

The third-generation high-density chip developed by Shengjie Technology has higher density and better probe quality than the two generations. The density of the first generation is high, but the quality of the probe is poor. The second-generation products are not dense enough, and the molecular positions are random and can only be sequenced in two dimensions.

Zhou Wei made a metaphor: If the genome is likened to a book, the second generation of sequencing is to smash the book, throw these molecules on the surface, and shoot with a camera. Genomic fragments must be repeated, so there must be duplicates in this book. This adds to the difficulty of later binding. In addition, this book is still very thick, and it will inevitably go wrong or missing during the binding process. In the end, this book may not understand. Moreover, if the wrong place happens to be a fragment of a mutation, its impact on medicine or biology is very large.

"Our initial thought was that we couldn't smash it, but we would look at it one page at a time." Zhou Wei explained to the arterial network reporter. They want to make a chip that can stretch the DNA and put it on it before interpreting it. This is the long sequencing technology.

At the earliest, Shengjie Technology was simply trying to make high-density chips for use in the 2D and 3D sequencing products required for their own research. But after the production process was established, they found that the demand for the conventional chip market was also great.

“This is a very good market and we are starting to expand production.”

Tumors are the top priority in the field of genetic testing applications. From the variation of tumor cells to the distribution of their locations, genetic testing has become a powerful tool for cancer diagnosis and treatment. However, this also means that testing for the tumor field has become a Red Sea market.

“Our business in the field of cancer is to work with others to provide them with customized products and services.”

In addition, three generations of chips are used in drug metabolomics, agriculture, and consumer genomics. Among them, the most rapid development is another consumer genomics, which is also the market that Aofei has been working hard. In 2017, an Ancestry company reached 5 million sample sizes. Domestic companies are growing very fast and the market is heating up.

However, such a large output, in addition to considering the cost, manufacturers also consider the flux of the chip.

"There is not enough flux, it can't be a few million samples," Zhou said.

He believes that consumer genomics in the United States has passed the growth period and is not the best cut-in period for startups.

And Shengjie Technology chose the field of ophthalmic diseases that people started to pay attention to.

Ophthalmic diseases are mostly single-gene diseases, but single-gene disease does not mean that its sequencing is simple.

Zhou Wei told the arterial network reporter that about 10% of the genes related to ophthalmology are about 10% of the so-called "pseudo-genes." Some of these genes have an effect on the disease; the other part looks like the disease, but it has no effect on the disease.

Zhou Wei defined this part of the unaffected gene as a "pseudogene". "It's not easy to separate these 'true genes' from 'pseudo genes'." If not, patients who only perform a genetic test on an eye disease may cost thousands of dollars.

At present, Shengjie Technology is conducting early application research and exploration for eye diseases. At the forefront are sequencing methods for retinal pigmented lesions and a study of visual decline in children. There are already several pharmaceutical products in this field in the clinical stage, in which Sage Technology helps their clinical trials.

“ Precise medicine for cancer is definitely important, but many diseases that are traditionally considered simple are also very valuable for exploration.” For example, eye diseases, which mainly involve two types of people, one is a newborn child, the other It is the elderly.

"Especially, the eye diseases of the elderly can be prevented by diet and drugs. It may delay the symptoms that will appear at the age of 50 until the age of 70." Zhou said, "This is two very Good market."

In the high-density chip market, in addition to a startup company, there are only two giants, Illumina and Thermo Fisher, who can have such chip production capacity. Roche has revoked the parts division, leaving only a portion of the chip ownership for diagnostics from Affyme.

Thermo Fisher has acquired the production capacity of high-density chips by swallowing the entire fly-in capsule. Coincidentally, Roche, Thermo Fisher, and Shengjie Technology have a close relationship with Angfei.

During the early years of the acquisition of Anfei, Seibu and his friends also raised a sum of money and wanted to buy Angfei, but ultimately did not succeed.

"Many of our old colleagues at Aofei hope that Angfei can continue to develop independently. We should work hard. Although not bought, Shengjie has a knowledge in the industry."

At that time, the production line of Angfei had been 20 years old, and the backwardness of technology made the company have to choose to rely on another mountain. This also gave Zhou Wei a warning that for Shengjie Technology, scientific research cannot stop.

"We already have a third-generation chip, but at the same time we are still working on the fourth and fifth generation chips."

“Even if the three generations are ready, our mission will not be completed and the genome is too complicated.”

According to Zhou Wei, Shengjie Technology has established R&D bases in Silicon Valley, Oregon and Hangzhou. Silicon Valley is currently the most important research base and the earliest product line; the clinical laboratory in Oregon is mainly responsible for the clinical transformation of the genome; the Hangzhou base is more focused on applied research, and also laid a production line.

"There is basically research in the United States, most of them are old colleagues from Aofei, and some new colleagues from Stanford University have joined." He introduced to the arterial network, "We are next to Stanford University."

When asked about his investment in scientific research, Zhou Hao said frankly that he needed a lot of money. Since its inception in 2009, they have received more than $100 million in financing. These investment institutions include venture capital institutions from the United States and China, including semiconductor industry funds such as Wu Yuefeng Capital, and industrial funds such as the British ARM Corporation. “We are a standard Silicon Valley style,” he said.

Not only that, SJ Tech does not choose to produce CMOs like most startups do. In addition to the production lines in Silicon Valley and Hangzhou, they also established their own production bases in the Hsinchu Semiconductor Round Area in Taiwan.

Surgery Technology established a subsidiary in Hangzhou in 2015. A large part of the incentive behind this action is due to the great opportunities in the Chinese market. "The speed of China's market development is beyond my expectation. The research conditions in Hangzhou are very suitable for the company's next development." Zhou said. Biotech is currently the only biochip company in Asia that has comprehensive technology and masters the core manufacturing process and design of semiconductors.

At first, the main cooperation mode of Shengjie Technology was to provide complete products and customized chip services to enterprises. In May 2018, the cooperation with micro-medicine gave them more inspiration.

The cooperation between the two parties includes several aspects. One is the construction of clinical laboratory. Shengjie Technology is responsible for introducing American technology to China and developing special chips together with micro-medicine. In addition, they will help micro-medicine to carry out several mobiles. Design work for equipment.

“We have a lot of users now, and we are very interested in how they give technology to all patients as quickly as possible.”

Zhou Wei finally revealed to the arterial network that the production scale of Shengjie Technology's Hangzhou production line will be larger than that of Taiwan's production line. The current planned output value is in the billion-dollar class. At the same time, given the favourable policies of Hong Kong, the future does not rule out the possibility of an IPO in Hong Kong.

After the interview, Zhou Wei’s Shengjie Technology once again signed an important cooperation agreement with Micromedicine and Lee & Medical . It coincides with the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the North China, and expects Zhou Wei and his Biotech to bring new opportunities to the genetic industry in the Mainland.

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