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During his breaks, Zhao Zhengyang always likes to invite his friends to have a lively football match. On the football field, this biochemistry engineering doctor takes on the responsibility of leading the team to score goals; but when returning to work, he prefers to describe what his team is doing as “goalkeeper”.
In 2021, Zhao Zhengyang resigned from his stable job and plunged into the entrepreneurial wave. He established Nanjing Zhengyang Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (later referred to as “Zhengyang Biotech”) in Jiangbei New District, focusing on biomedical quality inspection kits and overall solutions. This marked a new chapter in his entrepreneurial career. And the football spirit of “never giving up” has become his motto for entrepreneurship.
01 Scientists Venture into Entrepreneurship
Zhao Zhengyang’s entrepreneurial story is a typical example of a “scientist transforming into an entrepreneur”. He studied biology at Ocean University of China and later pursued further studies at the University of Queensland in Australia and Monash University. His research focused on molecular biology and biochemical engineering. After returning to China, Zhao Zhengyang, who had a solid theoretical foundation and rich experimental experience, first taught at a university and then worked in a foreign company in the field of research and development. “Working in a foreign company for five or six years, I have been in close contact with the industry,” Zhao Zhengyang said. This experience has enabled him to deeply understand how technology can be transformed into products and how to sell them.
The entrepreneurial opportunity came from a “reverse push”. He once served as an advisor for an investment institution, helping to review projects. However, during the review process, he discovered that many projects seemed “high-end and sophisticated”, but when placed in the actual industrial environment, they were difficult to implement. The investment institution curiously asked, “If it were you, what would you do?” Zhao Zhengyang clearly stated his plans for the transformation and implementation of scientific and technological achievements, and although the investment institution thought this path was a bit “old-fashioned”, they still decided to support him to give it a try. In 2021, Zhengyang Biotechnology was established in Jiangbei New District; one year later, the company launched two independently developed diagnostic test kits and gradually opened the market in the following two years. “We chose Nanjing and Jiangbei District after careful consideration. Nanjing has a balanced industrial structure in the field of biomedicine and great potential, and Jiangbei New District provides strong support for scientists’ entrepreneurship and has good supporting facilities,” Zhao Zhengyang said with a smile.
02 2 hours for result availability
After several years of development, Zhengyang Biotechnology has grown from a single person to a team of nearly twenty people, with 80% of them being R&D personnel. Their main focus is on a series of test kits that specifically detect residues, impurities and contaminants in biological products and medicines, which are clearly stipulated in the pharmacopoeia for inspection. “If they cannot be detected, contamination may cause inflammation, immune reactions in patients, and even more serious consequences,” Zhao Zhengyang explained.
Its mycoplasma rapid detection kit is one of the company’s “key products”. Mycoplasma is a very tiny microorganism that is prone to contaminating cell culture systems. For antibody drugs, cell therapy, gene therapy, vaccines and other biological drugs, the presence of mycoplasma residues is a mandatory test item clearly stipulated in the pharmacopoeia.
Take the currently very popular innovative technology of cell therapy as an example. This “living medicine” has very strong characteristics. Cells are extracted from the patient’s body, then modified and expanded in vitro, and finally returned to the patient. The entire process has an extremely short “shelf life” and requires almost an extremely strict production rhythm. The traditional mycoplasma detection method relies on the cultivation method, which takes as long as 28 days. For cell therapy, waiting for 28 days to get the results means that the cells have already lost their effectiveness, and there is no way to talk about treatment. This time contradiction was also one of the limiting factors for the rapid promotion and application of such advanced therapies. “Our test kit, combined with an automated system, can provide results in about 2 hours,” Zhao Zhengyang introduced. Besides the significant improvement in efficiency, the more crucial point is the breakthrough in detection performance: Zhengyang Biotechnology’s mycoplasma test kit not only has a wide coverage, capable of detecting over 200 types of mycoplasma, but its sensitivity even reaches 5 CFU/mL. What’s more noteworthy is that this test kit has also passed the verification of the world’s top third-party laboratories, and the reports comply with the pharmacopoeia requirements of China, the United States, Japan, and Europe, and can support pharmaceutical companies to conduct “Sino-US dual filing”. “This means that pharmaceutical companies using our products, when filing their drugs in China and the United States, the data in the detection环节 are common， which can save time and reduce costs for the enterprises,” Zhao Zhengyang said.
03 More than 30 test kits have been launched on the market
Currently, the company has launched over 30 types of test kit products, covering key quality inspection stages such as host cell residual DNA detection and sterile rapid testing. These products have entered the supply chains of many local and nationally renowned pharmaceutical enterprises, including several cell therapy companies nearby. Once the test kit business is on track, Zhao Zhengyang has begun to formulate a more long-term development plan.
In his plan, on one hand, the company will continue to deepen its focus on the quality inspection of biopharmaceuticals, develop more detection products that meet the requirements of the pharmacopoeia, and promote the update of industry standards. On the other hand, the company will launch deeper synthetic biology platform business, including new drug research and development and CRO services. In addition, Zhengyang Biotechnology is also exploring the expansion of technology to food and animal testing fields.
From university teachers to business founders, from technological research to market expansion, behind Zhao Zhengyang’s transformation lies his unwavering dedication to “transforming knowledge into valuable products”. Just like the football he loves – it requires both individual skills and teamwork, as well as the determination to hold the defense line in place at critical moments. In this biopharmaceutical industry hotspot of Jiangbei New District, enterprises like Zhengyang Biotechnology, who act as “gatekeepers”, are using solid technology and innovation to build a quality defense line for more pharmaceutical companies that are racing ahead. This ensures that every “attack” of innovative drugs is more confident and safer.
