Aqsens Health and OG Pharmaceuticals partner for an upcoming collaborative research project – Interview with OG Pharmaceuticals Founder & CEO Dr. Zhao Wanzhou
Dr. Zhao Wanzhou graduated with a doctorate from China Union Medical College, and has studied at Witten/Herdecke University in Germany, and served as Research Fellow in the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and the John Hopkins University in the United States. During his career he has worked as an expert in governmental and private research projects, lectured as a visiting professor in several different universities, and received multiple honors for his work in the field of science. He currently leads OG Pharmaceuticals, a R&D and pharmaceutical company located in Nanjing, China, just a few hours West of Shanghai.
Dr. Zhao answered shared his views about the upcoming collaboration, the benefits of urine-based detection, and applying new cancer screening solutions in China.
Please briefly introduce OG Pharmaceuticals.
OG Pharmaceuticals is a high-tech service outsourcing company specialized in providing innovative medical devices, drug R&D and translational medicine research key technology solutions. The company provides innovative medical devices and drug R&D Contract Research Organisation services for customers at home and abroad, including design, optimization, testing, pre-clinical and clinical research of medical devices and innovative drugs. The technical platform covers many fields, such as medicine, in vitro diagnosis, devices, cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, pharmaceutical chemistry, and pharmacology.
Why is OG Pharma interested in urine-based cancer detection?
Cancer early detection is very important to improve patients’ survival and life quality. Currently most of the IVDs are using serum for cancer diagnosis, which is invasive, not comfortable, and time-consuming, as the patients need to go to hospitals to do this. Urine-based cancer detection provides a new solution to solve the problem. With the basic scientific research progress, urine has been proved to be a good human sample source for disease and physiological function detection. OG Pharma is concerned with not only medical products but also patients' life quality. We believe urine-based cancer detection will benefit early diagnosis and early prevention of disease progress.
Are different urinary tract cancers prevalent in China?
The three major tumors of the urinary system usually refer to kidney cancer, bladder cancer and prostate cancer. Among the three major tumors, the highest incidence rate is bladder cancer, followed by prostate cancer, and finally kidney cancer. The gap between the three is very small; in terms of mortality, prostate cancer has surpassed bladder cancer to become the first, and finally kidney cancer.
In February 2022 this year, the China National Cancer Center released the latest national cancer statistics (2016). The data released in this report is collected by the National Cancer Registration Center and summarized the registration data of the National Cancer Registry in 2016. Among them, the new cases were 4.064 million, and the incidence rate was 186.46/100,000. Among the new cases, 82,000 were bladder cancer, 78,000 were prostate cancer, 76,000 were kidney cancer and 3,000 were testicular cancer.
As you can see from the data above, with the economic development and population aging, different urinary tract cancers will be a future burden to patients in China.
What in your view is the importance of developing non-invasive urine-based cancer detection?
Cancer early detection is very important to improve cancer early therapy outcome, which will benefit the patients through higher survival rate and better life quality. If the patients have been diagnosed early, doctors are able use multiple therapy ways including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, cell therapy or other targeting therapy to treat the cancer more effectively. Currently with most malignant cancers when diagnosed, the patients are already in the late stage of the disease. And though therapy is ongoing, the therapy outcome is still limited.
What could be the significance of urine-based cancer detection in China?
Urine-based cancer detection in China will benefit the early diagnosis of the diseases. It will be convenient and easier for patients. As the incidence and mortality of urinary tract cancers in China is increasing, especially with the economic development and population aging, new medical technologies and IVD products have tremendous demand in China.
Your thoughts about the upcoming research collaboration with Aqsens Health?
OG Pharma is looking forward to the collaboration with Aqsens. Aqsens provides a new cancer early detection technology platform by using urine samples, which is accurate, reliable, and comfortable for patients. Our upcoming research collaboration will benefit Chinese patients for early cancer detection. Aqsens technology and products could be used in hospitals, at home, or in health centers. People over 40 years old could do routine urine self-testing for potential cancer risks at home. And when used in a clinic setting, this new method could not only provide a reliable and convenient detection solution, but also provide tools for real time analysis of therapy effectiveness.
Aqsens and OG Pharma are set to begin a new research collaboration later this year. Stay tuned for more news about the collaboration by following us on our social media!
