【财富周刊110815】中国：未来生物技术超级大国？

doraemonls

【中文标题】中国：未来生物技术超级大国？
【原文标题】China: The next biotech superpower?
【登载媒体】财富
【来源地址】http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/15/china-the-next-biotech-superpower/
【译者】doraemonls
【翻译方式】人工
【原文库链接】http://bbs.m4.cn/thread-3152332-1-1.html
【声明】欢迎转载，请务必注明译者和出处 bbs.m4.cn。
【译文】


China will spend billions on biotech, even as the industry struggles in the U.S. to turn research into gold. Will U.S. biotech become the next Detroit?
尽管生物技术行业在美国还在努力将研究变成金钱，中国依然准备向生物技术投入数十亿元。
By David Ewing Duncan, contributor


FORTUNE -- Now it's China's turn to fling lots of cash at trying to come up with cures.
现在中国正在投入大量现金以期改变生物技术行业的发展现状。


For more than a decade, the U.S. has lavished funding on efforts to transform a wealth of biological breakthroughs in the lab into actual therapies and profits. After spending nearly a trillion dollars in public and private investments since 2000, however, the biotech and pharma industries have produced an average of only about 21 new drugs a year in recent years -- only two-thirds of the output from 1996 to 2004. Drugs now take a dozen years to be tested and approved, and 90% of meds that reach human clinical trial fail.
数十年来，美国慷慨解囊，努力得到生物技术的突破，以便将实验室的研究变成实际的治疗和经济利益。然而，自2000年以来，在支出了近万亿公共和私人的资金的情况下，生物技术和制药行业近几年平均只产出21种新药物--这是1996到2004年产出量的2/3。还需要十几的时间对药物进行临床测试和批准，并且进行人体临床试验的药物中有90%未通过测试。


This meager yield is causing investors to abscond and business models to be questioned, with only one in nine venture dollars in the U.S. last year going to biotech, down from a ratio of nearly one in six in 2009. Revenues are also down, with a handful of large biotechs like Amgen (AMGN) making the lion's share of money while the majority of biotechs struggle to raise funds, especially for early stage projects.
这样微博的收益率导致了投资者离开，商业模式也受到了质疑。2009年，美国1/9的风投资金都投入了生物技术领域，比2006年的比例1/6下降了不少。风投资金也同样下降了。少数生物科技公司如安进获得了大部分风投，大多数小公司，尤其是那些处在项目早期的公司，还在努力筹集资金。


Meanwhile, across the Pacific Ocean, the Chinese government has decided that now is the time to take some of its massive national reserves of cash and launch a spending spree on biomedicine -- $308 billion over the next five years. "The development priorities of the 12th Five-Year Plan – biopharmacy, bioengineering, bioagriculture, and biomanufacturing – will bring benefits to Chinese people," said Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong at a recent meeting, according to China Daily. The article in this state-funded newspaper goes on to report the ambitious goals of this investment: "From 2011 to 2015, it is expected to generate 1 million jobs, extend people's life expectancies by one year and reduce the infant mortality rate to 12 percent, as well as reduce emissions of the most common pollutants by 10 percent, Ma elaborated."
与此同时，在大洋彼岸，中国政府已经决定拿出它巨额现金储备的一部分—未来五年共约3080亿美元，投入生物医学领域。是时候开始一场生物医学技术的狂欢了。据中国日报报道，中国国务委员刘延东在一次会议上提到：“第12个五年计划里，重点发展的生物制药、生物工程、生技农业和生物药品生产将促进改善民生。”该文还报道了这项投资的宏伟目标：“2011年至2015年，预计新增100万个就业岗位，人均期望寿命增加1年，婴幼儿死亡率降低12%，常规污染物排放减少10%。”


This commitment mirrors the attitude in the U.S. in our giddier days of 1998, when President Bill Clinton joined with Congressional leaders to champion a doubling of the NIH's budget over five years. This major bump up in biomedical research came as the Human Genome Project – which completed a draft "map" of human DNA in 2000 - kicked into high gear and scientists believed that the burgeoning field of molecular biology soon would be producing a plethora of new drugs and treatments during the decade of the aughts.
这和美国在1998年经济繁荣期的做法如出一辙。当时比尔·克林顿联合了国会领袖，成功的将美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）的5年预算增加了一倍。随着生物医药研究的大发展，人类基因组计划问世。人类基因组计划于2000年完成了草图，并在当时被寄予了很高的期望。科学家相信，在21世纪的前10年，蓬勃发展的分子生物学领域会带来大量的新药物和新疗法。


Avoiding a Detroit analogy
避免重蹈底特律的覆辙


What happened in the U.S. is both a cautionary tale and an opportunity – neither apparently lost on the Chinese.
对中国而言，美国的经历既是警示也是机遇。


The cautionary tale is what happens when governments -- and in this case the private sector in Big Pharma -- throw money into research without a real plan to translate all of the discoveries, which can be dazzling as science projects, into tangible products. A mere 4% of the NIH's budget goes to so-called "translational medicine," an oversight acknowledged by NIH Director Francis Collins late last year when he hastily announced plans to form a new Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT). This is great idea, although this new entity is having to make due with no overall increase in translational funding.
需要警惕的是，政府（在美国主要是大型制药公司）没有实际计划就为研发投入大量资金，尽管研究项目看起来光彩夺目，但结果未知。NIH主任Francis Collins承认，到去年底，他匆匆宣布计划成立转化医学与治疗学研究所时，仅有预算的4%用于所谓的“转化医学”。成立新研究所是个不错的想法，但它不得不先弄到预付款并且不能增加转化基金的总体投入。


The opportunity for the Chinese – and, of course, for the U.S. – is to learn from this overemphasis on the "R" (research) in the "R&D" equation, and to focus more on the "D" (development). The other opening for China (and others) is to take the mass of basic research bought by America's trillion-dollar investment, which is readily available in journals and databases, and turn it into products – and into gold.
机遇在于，中国需要学习不能过分强调“研发”里的 “研究”，更应关注与“开发”，美国也同样。中国的另一个机会在于，能够借鉴美国用数万亿美元投资做好的基础研究。这些成果已经在学报和数据库上刊发，中国需要将其转化成产品和经济效益。


Like Japan vis-à-vis Detroit in the 1970s, China finds itself with cash and without an ingrained way of doing things in biotechnology, allowing them to come up with fresh approaches. Also like the Japanese 40 years ago, China has sent its brain trust of students and young researchers to our universities and to work in our companies to learn what's gone right – and wrong.
现在的中国就像上世纪70年代向底特律挑战的日本一样，拥有巨大的现金储备，在生物科技领域又没有束缚。这让中国有了新的出路。除此以外，中国还派遣了大量年轻的科研工作者到美国的大学、公司留学或工作，学习美国正确或错误的经验教训。


No one, including China, is even close to truly challenging the U.S. in biotechnology – not yet. Nor is this industry in the U.S. as calcified as Detroit during its heavy-metal doldrums of the 1970s, with American "R" still highly innovative and globally focused. U.S. life science companies, ranging from big pharmas such as Merck (MRK) and Pfizer (PFE) to biotechs such as Biogen-Idec (BIIB) are also eagerly collaborating with Chinese counterparts.
到目前为止，还没有任何国家包括中国，有能力挑战美国在生物科技方面的地位。靠着美国研究人员的高度创新精神和全球的关注，美国的生物科技产业依然坚挺，并不是声称的像上世纪70年代底特律那样萧条。美国的生命科学公司，从大型制药公司例如默克（MRK）、辉瑞（PFE）到小型生物科技公司艾迪克（BIIB）都迫切希望和中国公司一起合作。，


Yet there is a question of whether America in the long run can maintain its edge as the biotech colossus. I suspect that it won't – though as the "New Detroit" is discovering, this may not necessarily be a bad thing for consumers, or for the company's bottom line, even if it may be equally painful to make a transition from the old to the new.
然而，在生科领域，美国能否长期维持其霸主地位仍然未知。我认为不会，因为“新底特律”已经出现。这对消费者或者公司底线而言也并非完全的坏事，即便除旧迎新是个痛苦的过程。

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