Guilin Pharma uses local herbs and innovative R&D to win market share

Artemisia annua, also known as sweet wormwood, may be a common wormwood plant in temperate China, but for Africans suffering from malaria, it can be a life-saving drug, as Guilin Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co Ltd proved on Nov 5, 2017 with its groundbreaking export volume.

On that day, the company dispatched 100 million vials of Artesunate for Injection globally, helping more than 20 million severely ill malaria patients, especially those aged under 5 in Africa, regain health.

The drug is now sold in 41 countries and regions, taking up over 90 percent of the global market. It is also the only injection product in the world that has been pre-certified by the World Health Organization.

The Guangxi-based company is a member of Fosun Pharmaceutical Group. For five consecutive years, it has been ranking among top 20 of the country's Western medicine preparations that are exported. According to the China Chamber of Commerce for Import & Export of Medicines & Health Products, Guilin Pharma overtook Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co Ltd last year to grab the No 2 spot on the list, with the No 1 being Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd.

WHO data showed that at the beginning of the 21st century, there were at least 300 million cases of acute malaria annually. The death toll globally was over 1 million, among which 90 percent happened in Africa. The mortality rate of malaria among African children under 5 was as high as 71 percent.

Wu Yifang, president and CEO of Fosun Pharma, said, "All anti-malaria drugs we export were invented by ourselves, accounting for 70 to 80 percent of the nation's total export of such medicine. Malaria patients, especially those in Africa, benefit from our products. The Artesunate products are among the main aid items from the Chinese government to Africa."

From 1977 to 2005, it took nearly 30 years for the company's research and development team to solve the product's dissolution problem, because low dissolution rate would mean it will take longer for the drug to take effect, leaving less time for doctors to save lives.

"Thirty years ago, R&D in Chinese institutions was under-developed, and we didn't get much assistance at first. There were even doubts. The belief that supported me and my team to insist on working on the Artesunate products was that we wanted to bring innovative products to the world," said Liu Xu, senior engineer with Guilin Pharma.

"The Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region is rich in artemisia annua, where the anti-malaria drugs come from. Given abundant resources, we insisted on making our own Chinese products. Thousands of failures later, we finally succeeded, bringing hope for tens of millions of malaria patients. Even the British and French doctors in Africa spoke highly of our products," Liu said.

After that, the Artesunate for Injection product was recommended by the WHO as the first choice to treat severe malaria.

Chen Qiaoshan, a medical analyst at Beijing-based internet consultancy Analysys, said in terms of process innovation, the company solved the problem of extracting the active ingredient from the Chinese herb and transform it into a universal drug, serving as a guidance for other Chinese medical companies.

"For medical enterprises, innovative ability is key. Only when companies lay emphasis on research and development can they be competitive," said Chen.

For more than 10 years, Guilin Pharma has been exporting anti-malaria drugs to the world. With the help of the company, the mortality rate of malaria in the world dropped from roughly 20 percent in 2010 to 12.9 percent in 2016, and the figure for the African region declined from over 60 percent to 43 percent during the same period, as the WHO's World Malaria Report 2017 pointed out.

As the largest pharmaceutical exporter in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the company employs more than 1,200 employees, and has been hiring 200 new staff every year. It specializes in the manufacture of over 200 types of products in four categories (tablet, capsule, injection and bulk drug).

In 2017, its sales revenue surged 11 percent to 830 million yuan ($124 million), with 71 percent or 590 million yuan coming from overseas business, up 12 percent year-on-year. Its net profit was 280 million yuan, up 25 percent.

For three consecutive years, the company's export growth rate was at least 20 percent. Its sales revenue goal for 2018 is 930 million yuan, which it is striving to stretch to 1 billion yuan.

"As part of our efforts to go global, Guilin Pharma has been assisting African people, as well as the rest of the world, in combating malaria for many years. We regard it as our mission to satisfy patients' need of being healthy, happy and affluent. Next step, our goal is to help the local people in Africa overcome malaria completely," said Wu Yifang, president and CEO of Fosun Pharma.