Recently, Henlius has made significant progress in the R&D of novel antibodies and immune-oncology therapies, i.e. multiple trials of its anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody (mAb) HLX10 have entered pivotal stages, pre-clinical evaluation of innovative mAbs HLX23 (targeting CD73) and HLX24 (targeting CD47) is going on smoothly and the company has also submitted China and international patent applications for several bispecific antibodies. Apart from an established and still growing pipeline, Henlius R&D team also keeps growing. Recently, Dr. Ningshu Liu has joined Henlius as Co-CSO and Senior Vice President of R&D, responsible for early research strategy implementation and innovative product pipeline expansion.
Dr. Ningshu Liu has over 20 years of research and development experience in the pharmaceutical industry and has served as Research Fellow, Sr. Director-Global Strategy Lead, Head of Laboratory Immuno-Oncology, Head of Laboratory Oncogenic Signaling in Bayer Germany, Group leader of Oncology Research in Bayer Research Center USA, Group Manager of Asthma and Inflammation diseases in Bayer Research Center Kyoto,etc. Dr. Ningshu Liu has extensive experience in the field of immune-oncology drug research and development.
Q1: Could you briefly tell us about your education and industry experience?
Dr. Ningshu Liu: I completed my Bachelor, Master and Ph.D. study respectively in three universities of three countries, Peking University in China, Tokyo University in Japan and University of Marburg in Germany. The majors I studies also changed. This meant that I had to face challenges not only from studying academic knowledge in different areas, but also from trying to adapt to different languages and cultures. However, this quite special experience of education also allowed me to experience diverse merits of different cultures, which helped to build up my own creation ability. During my education, I have got chance to think from bottom to top, to act, to go through setbacks and to hold on in difficult situations. Finally, I completed my study with seven published papers and two patents and my master and Ph.D. thesis were rated summa cum laude. This experience is very important to my career in drug discovery and development. I have learnt that when you are in a situation behind others, you must be keen to study extensively, observe and think carefully, make the most of your advantages to find a way to catch up, when you have made some achievements, you still need to take challenges of unsolved clinical problems . As to my past industrial experience, I built my career mainly in Bayer Japan, Bayer US and Bayer Germany in drug discovery and development and bringing in advanced technologies and collaborations, for immune diseases and tumors. My experience spanned over target discovery and validation, project management, drug screening and optimization, pre-clinical development, translational research, biomarker strategy, clinical study design, indication expansion and product launch. In recent years, I have also spent time and effort in R&D strategy development, investment evaluation, business development and collaborations on innovative technologies.
Q2: What are the main reasons that attracted you to join Henlius?
Dr. Ningshu Liu: In the past ten years, China’s biopharmaceutical industry has grown quickly, from almost zero to its current prosperity. I deeply admire the co-founders of Henlius, Dr. Scott Liu and Dr. Weidong Jiang and their experience in founding Henlius. The passion and speed of the Company, as well as its commitment to patients, the hardworking spirit of the team, their idea of keep improving, and the young colleagues here impressed and inspired me a lot. Last but not the least important is that I have studied and worked in Japan, the US and Germany altogether for thirty years and have circled the world twice, but I have never worked in China. I wish that I could also do something for the development of China’s biopharmaceutical industry by joining a local innovative company. This way, I will not have regrets for my career.
Q3: What areas shall we pay attention to in immune oncology in the next few years? What are the points to note during drug development in these areas?
Dr. Ningshu Liu: Although PD-1/L1 inhibitors have demonstrated outstanding efficacy in a part of cancer patients, there are still a lot of patients (around 80% of all cancer patients) that do not respond to PD-1/L1 inhibitors. This is due to the fact that there are many steps in anti-tumour immune responses and inhibition on any one of the steps can affect killing of tumour cells. In the meantime, tumour has evolved many tricks to cripple immune responses, including inhibiting the existence of immune cells in tumour microenviroment and inhibiting the infiltration of immune cell into tumours. This will turn tumours into the so-called ‘cold’ state and patients with ‘cold’ tumours have lost their innate or adaptive immunity. In the past few years, there are thousands of PD-1/L1 inhibitor combos tested in clinical trials. Some of them have succeeded, but most have failed. Especially for ‘cold’ tumours, we currently have not found an effective way to treat it, so I think in the near future the research focus will be looking for a way to turn ‘cold’ tumours into ‘hot’ tumours. We will need to target the mechanisms used by tumours to inhibit immune responses and we shall increase the success rate of new drug targets identification and validation and improve clinical validation of innovative therapies, with the help of translational medicine and reverse translational medicine. We will not only look at targets related to CD8+ T cells, but also extend to targets related to inhibitory immune cell populations like Treg, M2-TAM and MDSC and those targets that can modulate tumour microenvironment. In the meantime, technical breakthroughs are of equal importance, e.g. leveraging antibody engineering platform and AI platform to design bispecific/multispecific antibodies to increase drug selectivity. Apart from the above-mentioned areas in basic research, innovation in drug discovery and development shall also relying on science-oriented translational medicine studies. Developing combination therapies consisting of different treatment modalities (biologics, small molecules, cell therapies, oncolytic virus, etc.) In summary, innovations in the future will need extension of our knowledge boarders, breakthroughs in techniques and corporate-corporate or corporate-academia collaborations.
Q4: What are your thoughts on Henlius innovation pipeline and what are your future plans to expand this pipeline? What are your expectations on your career in Henlius?
Dr. Ningshu Liu: Henlius has built a diversified product pipeline as well as integrated monoclonal antibody engineering platform and bispecific antibody R&D platform. These are great achievements. In the future, we will continue to build our innovative targets identification and validation platform and to develop multi-targeting combination therapies. We will keep improving the efficiency of proof-of-concept (PoC) clinical trials for innovative drugs. We will keep recruiting talents and bringing in new technologies. In the meantime, we will also continue improving innovation and research abilities of our team. My expectations to myself and to Henlius’ team is that we will work together to keep improving the success rate of our innovative drugs with science-oriented approaches, to strengthen the advantage and differentiation of our fast-follower drugs, to bring in advanced techniques, to overcome challenges in our R&D projects, to maintain close collaborations with our industrial peers and academic researchers and to provide as much support as we can for our clinical trials. We hope with these efforts we can benefit more and more patients with our high-quality products.
Q5: What are your hobbies in your spare time?
Dr. Ningshu Liu: Travel, photography, cooking and making desert. Under the influence of my daughter, I also like watching classical opera and ballet.