Clover Liang Peng: How to bring the patented technology 'home' to achieve the dark horse of COVID-19 vaccine?

In 2022, our city is still breathing heavily, with masks in sight.

The relaxation of epidemic prevention and control has made people feel confused and both happy and sad. On the other hand, COVID-19 vaccine research and development companies are also stepping up their sprint. Four COVID-19 vaccines were approved for emergency use in two days from December 4 to 5, and many companies are racing to obtain novel coronavirus treatment drugs in a new round of race against the novel coronavirus strain.

On December 5, Shamrock Bio had good news, announcing that its COVID-19 vaccine SCB-2019 (CpG1018/ aluminum adjuvant) had been put into emergency use after being evaluated by national authorities. On December 14, the good news came one after another, as People's Daily reported that Zhejiang Shamrock recombinant Novel coronavirus protein subunit vaccine (CHO cell), a subsidiary of Shamrock Biotechnology, was included in the second dose of secondary booster immunization.

Behind this success, cannot leave it behind the inventor of the core patented technology - Liang Peng, Sichuan clover biological pharmaceutical Company founder, chairman and chief scientific officer, so, what is his legendary story?

Inherit medicine family, invented protein trimer technology

From the past media reports, we can get a rough glimpse of Liang Peng's extraordinary life experience: scientific research and entrepreneurship are not wrong, to create amazing scientific achievements!

Born in a medical family, Liang Peng is a native of Chengdu, Sichuan Province. His parents are working in Sichuan medicine. At the age of 17, he was admitted to Peking University from the 12th High School of Chengdu. Influenced by his father, he chose the department of biology. In 1982, after he received his bachelor of Science degree in biology, he went to the United States for further study as one of the first overseas students after the reform and opening-up policy. During his stay in the United States, Liang Peng successively obtained a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Illinois, a postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School, and a tenured professor at Vanderbilt University.

According to Baike, Liang has published nearly 70 articles in world-famous journals such as Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methodology, Nature Cancer Review, Bulletin of the Members of the National Academy of Sciences and Enzymology Methods, and his ISI citation rate is more than 9,000 times.

Most notably, when Liang Peng was a postdoctoral fellow at the Cancer Institute of Harvard University, he studied with Professor Paddy, former president of the American Association for Cancer Research, and developed the "gene difference display technology". The achievement was published in the American journal Science, which attracted wide attention in the industry and later won several international awards. In 1992, he founded GenHunter, a Boston-based company that successfully commercialized the technology. After starting his business, he continued to work hard on scientific research. Soon, he and his team invented the world's only biopharmaceutical technology platform Trimer-Tag, which can trimerize proteins to achieve trimerization of any target protein. With this discovery, he established the past and future of clover life.

Return to China to start a business and bring patented technologies back to "home"

After studying and living in the United States for more than 20 years, Liang Peng, 46, returned to China with his patented protein trimer technology and founded Shamrock Bio-pharmaceutical Company in his hometown of Chengdu in 2007.

"Scientists have some lofty ideals." This sentence, used in the clover biological founder Liang Peng body appropriate. Liang says clover biology contains good intentions, and he sees it not only as a vivid representation of a platform for protein trimerization, but also as a sign of luck. "My original ambition is to bring hope and luck to patients and their families with advanced biopharmaceutical inventions." [1]

After 13 years of development, Shamrock Bio has become a global clinical trial stage biopharmaceutical company. Peaches and plums do not speak, a path is formed beneath them. Shamrock has attracted the participation of many top Chinese pharmaceutical think tanks such as Dr. Liang Peng and Dr. Wang Xiaodong.

Among the numerous labels that have been attached to Liang Peng, the one that he finds most rewarding is the development of protein trimerization technology. The great thing about this invention is that by using it to construct a recombinant protein trimer fusion protein, it can effectively target previously ineffective signaling pathways and drug targets, and thus develop innovative bio-targeted drugs for millions of patients who do not have access to modern biologic drugs. [2]

With the outbreak of COVID-19, Shamrock Bio-based on the pioneering Trimer-Tag patented technology platform to develop COVID-19 vaccine candidate SCB-2019 (" S-trimer "recombinant protein subunit novel coronavirus vaccine candidate), as a" novel coronavirus vaccine dark horse "how successful? According to the latest published studies, SCB-2019, as an allogenic booster injection, performs better than inactivated vaccine and has strong neutralization effect against the globally dominant Omicron BA.5 variant subtype. Household contacts of infected family members who had been vaccinated with SCB-2019 were also 84 percent less likely to contract COVID-19 than those of infected family members who had not been vaccinated. Currently, Clover recombinant novel coronavirus protein subunit vaccine (CHO cells) has been incorporated into the second dose of secondary booster immunization.

There is no doubt that clover biology ran in front of many competitors. In addition to the confidence brought by unique skills, it also embodies the wisdom and effort of the founder and its core scientific research team.