Dr. Li Chen, Executive Director, and Chief Executive Officer, founded and leads Hua Medicine to discover and develop clinically differentiated medicine in China for Global. Under his leadership, Hua Medicine has successfully brought an disease modifying first-in-class glucokinase activator (GKA) HuaTangNing(華堂寧?) (dorzagliatin tablets, HMS5552) into China market. Dorzagliatin is approved by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) of China for Type 2 Diabetes with its unique mechanism of action in restoring the impaired glucose homeostasis. During this period, Hua Medicine raised 200M USD and established commercialization capabilities of HuaTangNing with strategic partnership in manufacturing, marketing and sales, as well as national distributors.
Li received his PhD at Iowa State University and joined Roche R&D center in USA in 1992. With 18 years at Roche, Li advanced his career from a medicinal chemist to the head of High Throughput Technology, and later CSO of Roche China R&D Center with a membership at Roche Research Leadership Team. He is an inventor of 80 granted patents, 223 patent applications and an author with about 70 publications including Nature Medicine, Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, Diabetes, Diabetes obesity and metabolism, PNAS, JACS and JOC.
Mr. George Lin, J.D., a healthcare veteran brings with him over 18 years of investment banking and legal experience working with numerous private and public companies globally. Prior to joining Hua Medicine, he was Asia Pacific Head of Consumer, Retail and Healthcare Investment Banking and Head of Hong Kong and Taiwan Investment Banking for Bank of America Merrill Lynch based in Hong Kong. As an investment banker and corporate lawyer focused on healthcare, retail and the consumer sectors, Mr. Lin was previously based in Los Angeles and San Francisco before moving to Hong Kong in 2007. His experience entails IPOs, debt and equity financings and M&As for leading companies in Asia, the United States and Europe. In the last 10 years alone, Mr. Lin has led M&A transactions valued (in aggregate) in excess of US$20 billion and raised financings valued (in aggregate) at over US$40 billion. Since April 2018, Mr. Lin has served as a member of the Biotech Advisory Panel of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Prior to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Mr. Lin also worked at Credit Suisse as an investment banker in their Hong Kong, San Francisco and Los Angeles offices, and at O'Melveny & Myers LLP as a corporate attorney in their Los Angeles Office. Mr. Lin received a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Biological Sciences from the University of California at Davis and a Juris Doctor degree from The University of Chicago Law School.
Dr. Yi Zhang heads the pharma. development team at Hua Medicine, and currently as the senior vice president and CMO. Prior to joining Hua, Dr. Zhang was the Associate Medical Director of Clinical Science at Roche Product Development group, Asia Pacific region. She served as a clinical scientist for innovative drug development in the areas of cardiovascular, metabolic and renal diseases. Prior to Roche, Dr. Zhang was a Physician and an Associate Professor at Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine with more than 10 years' clinical experience. Dr. Zhang was also a team leader of the molecular genetics research group at the Shanghai Institute of Hypertension and a principle investigator for several projects supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Foundation. Dr. Zhang obtained her Doctor of Medicine and PhD degrees from Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine(specialization in cardiology) She received training in molecular genetics, bioinformatics and epidemiology at the Chinese National Human Genome Center and at the Framingham Heart Study as a NIH/NHLBI visiting researcher. Dr. Zhang has received Shanghai Subject Chief Scientist and 60 publications in journals such as Nat Genet, Circ Cardiovasc Genet, Hum Mol Genet, 4 book chapters, and has 3 China patents.
Dr. Fuxing Tang obtained his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Florida. In addition, Dr. Tang conducted postdoctoral research in peptide delivery in Professor Ronald Borchardt’s group, which is well known for their work in Caco-2 cells. Before joining Hua Medicine, Dr. Tang worked in the pharmaceutical industry and regulatory affairs for 20 years. Dr. Tang worked as reviewer in the Office of Regulatory Science of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and worked in TEVA and Allergan as Global Director of Biopharmaceutical Sciences. Dr. Tang started his career at Forest labs, Inc. During his tenure at Forest labs, Inc/Allergan, Dr. Tang was instrumental in building various biopharmaceutical functions and in charge of multi-functions of ADME, preformulation, drug product process optimization and product post-approval manufacture process optimization.
Dr. Tang and his team made significant contributions in multiple successful IND/NDA filings and supported post-approval manufacturing for drug products such as Lexapro?, Namenda?, Namzaric?, Linezess?, Vraylar?, Viberzi?, among others, of which Lexapro?, Namenda? are blockbuster products with peak annual sales of US$2 billion. At Allergan/TEVA, Dr. Tang and his team supported drug development for both NDA and ANDA. Dr. Tang and his team significantly contributed to multiple first-to-files ANDA approvals such as doxycycline and abuse-deterrent-formulation (ADF) morphine sulfate.
Dr. Tang authored/coauthored more than 20 peer-reviewed research articles/patents across various fields, including organic synthesis, gene delivery, pre-formulation, formulation, and ADME studies.
Mr. Qing Dong serves as VP, Pharmaceutical Commercialization in Hua Medicine. Mr. Qing Dong brings over nearly 30 years’ rich hands-on experience in the commercial management and business development in large multi-national pharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining Hua Medicine, he was National Commercial Sr. Director at Gilead Sciences. He served as National Commercial Director both with Consumer Health BU, Bayer Healthcare Company Ltd. and Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Ltd. He held the positions of National Market Access Manager at Sandoz (China) Pharmaceutical Company and National Pricing Manager at Eli Lilly Asia Inc. Mr. Dong obtained his Bachelor of Pharmacy from Fudan University.
Dr. Changhong Li, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chief Executive Officer of Nanjing AscendRare Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. - a wholly owned subsidiary of Hua Medicine. Dr. Li has over 20 years of experience in the fields of islet biology, metabolism and translational medical research. In Oct. 2018, Dr. Li founded Nanjing AscendRare Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. and held the position of General Manager until Nov. 2022. From 2000 to 2018, Dr. Li worked at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States for over 18 years, including 3 years of postdoctoral training. During this period, Dr. Li served as research assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He was trained by and has collaborated closely with the renowned pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Charles Stanley and the preeminent biochemist Dr. Franz Matschinsky, who is known as "the father of glucokinase".
Dr. Changhong Li obtained his bachelor degree of medicine from Chengde Medical College in 1989 and his M.D and Ph.D from Beijing Medical University (now known as Peking University School of Medicine) in 1996. Dr. Li has published more than 60 SCI articles in internationally renowned academic journals such as JBC, Diabetes, JCI and Cell Metabolism. He has also published more than 10 Chinese articles in several core Chinese medical journals such as Chinese Medical Journal and Chinese Journal of Internal Medicine.
Ying Xie has more than 20 years of experience in quality and production operation management of multinational pharmaceutical companies. Before joining Hua Medicine, he worked as the head of quality management and production management of Edding, AstraZeneca (Japan & China) and Hospira. He has led different companies to pass GMP and GSP system certification in EU, Australia and China for many times. Rich practical experience in continuous improvement of quality system and building high performance quality team. Currently, he is responsible for the management of Hua Medicine clinical drug trial quality system and the quality management of commercial drug production and supply chain. He also serves as the executive vice chairman of the Quality committee of the company.
Ying Xie is an IRCA Certified Pharmaceutical Quality System Auditor, MSc Analysis and Pharmaceutical from Loughborough University, UK, and MBA from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.