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BEST UNDER A BILLION — 3SBIO

Bio Burst

Lou Jing’s drugmaker has gotten a big foothold in
China and wants future breakthroughs to be global.

BY JANE HO

t’s much more comfortable without government made the industry part of its
the tie,” says 55-year-old Lou Jing “2025” quest for world economic leader-
ater posing for a photographer. “I ship—its success has been 25 years in the
still haven’t got used to it.” he chair- making. Lou’s father, Lou Dan, an army
I man and chief executive of 3SBio, medic turned researcher (see box, p. 69),
one of China’s largest biopharmaceutical founded state-ailiated Shenyang Sun-
irms, is more at ease in just his lab coat. shine Pharmaceutical in 1993. As it soon
No wonder: He headed the research of privatized, his son’s U.S. academic work led
two of the company’s market-leader drugs, to the lab opening there.
Tpiao for low blood-platelet count in oncol- Lou Jing moved the U.S. research center
ogy patients, with a 51% share in China, the to Shenyang in 2001 and shited his focus
world’s only commercialized recombinant to inance and management when the
drug of its kind, and EPO—or biotech exchange of resources between China and
blood-cell boosting—drug Epiao for the U.S. got increasingly diicult ater 9/11. sales vice president at U.S. giant Schering-
kidney-induced anemia, with a 34% share. Having worked for over a decade alongside Plough. he sales team spent $2.5 million
On the backs of those two medicines, his father, he fully took over day-to-day in the irst year, going to conferences at ive-
3SBio’s revenue last year surged by a third management when Lou Dan retired in star hotels for networking. “At the time our
to $553 million. Both drugs were developed 2012. (He died this past March.) annual revenue was only $1 million,” says
at the Shenyang company’s U.S. research Sunshine started with an interferon Lou Jing. “Even overseas pharma compa-
center near Washington, D.C., set up by drug, less challenging in development, and nies thought we were over the top.”
Lou in 1995 ater a two-year postdoc at the launched it in 1995 when the son came Today 3SBio has a 2,500-strong sales
National Institutes of Health in Maryland. on board as research director. Within a force out of a 4,000 total employee head
hat followed a Ph.D. in molecular and few years the drug’s price was lowered to count, with some of the original sales team
cell biology from New York’s Fordham 60% below market, generating cash ow still in service. Its portfolio of 30-plus drugs
University. to inance research on Epiao and Tpiao, is sold to 14,000 hospitals and medical
Although 3SBio re ects a sectoral surge launched, respectively, in 1998 and 2005. institutions in China. “American doctors
in China—half a dozen other Chinese But Lou Dan wasn’t waiting for drug enjoy meeting new [salespeople], which
drug or biotech companies join it on this breakthroughs—he knew marketing mat- to them means new information and new
year’s 200 Best Under A Billion list, and the tered. In 1997 he hired a former China opportunities, but Chinese doctors prefer

64 | FORBES ASIA JULY / AUGUST 2018