From June 27 to 30, the semifinals and finals of the 7th China Returnee Entrepreneurship Competition, co-hosted by the China Technology Entrepreneurship Association Returnee Start-up Park Alliance and the People's Government of Changping District, Beijing, were successfully held online. Nearly a hundred returnee entrepreneurship projects competed against each other, with 20 projects advancing to the finals. In the end, the "Anti-aging Peptide Drug R&D" project of Nanjing Anji Biotech Co., Ltd.'s technology team ranked second in the overall score and first among biomedical projects.
Nanjing Anji Biotech Co., Ltd. is a biotech company focused on the R&D of innovative peptide drugs, consistently committed to original innovative peptide drug development and creating differentiated products driven by clinical and patient needs. The company has been certified as a National High-tech Enterprise for three consecutive terms, and its projects have been funded by the National Major Special Project and the Nanjing International Cooperation Project. The company possesses core peptide design and discovery technologies enabling the discovery of endogenous bioactive peptides, the design of novel peptide structures and PXC drug design. It has a comprehensive and systematic druggability evaluation platform enabling rapid drug screening and preclinical research. It currently has more than ten pipelines under development (some about to enter Phase II), dozens of reserve candidate peptide molecules pending development across fields such as rheumatoid arthritis, oncology, pain and fibrosis, and has filed 91 patents (61 granted). It also has a well-established talent team, including internationally leading scientific advisors from the USA, France and Australia, as well as senior professionals responsible for new drug R&D, intellectual property, peptide discovery and peptide synthesis.
Anji Biotech possesses target-based structure-targeted peptide design technology. Combined with its drug screening and evaluation platform, it can rapidly screen active peptide molecules and develop PXC drug design (peptide conjugation with other molecules, including peptides conjugated with small-molecule drugs, antibody drugs, nucleic acid drugs, nuclides, etc.). Based on its rapid peptide design and evaluation capabilities, Anji Biotech is collaborating with other enterprises to tackle the development of PDC (peptide-small molecule conjugates), POC (peptide-nucleic acid conjugates) and PAC (peptide-antibody conjugates) drugs. PDC drugs can upgrade traditional chemical drugs for large pharmaceutical companies, reducing toxicity and enhancing efficacy; POC drug design, by conjugating peptides with nucleic acids, improves the targeting of nucleic acid drugs and addresses their rapid in vivo degradation and difficulty in targeting extrahepatic tissues; PAC drug design, by fusing peptides with antibody molecules, achieves optimization of marketed antibody drugs for superior antibody therapeutics.
The project Anji Biotech entered in this competition was the anti-aging molecule AJ011, discovered in collaboration with expert Jean Martinez of the University of Montpellier, France. Through this first cooperation with Nanjing Anji Biotech, the company's peptide drug design foundation and activity screening capabilities were combined with the University of Montpellier's chemical structure modification capabilities, ultimately yielding the optimized anti-aging molecule AJ011. The company has conducted in-depth, systematic research on AJ011, confirming that it can extend the lifespan of nematodes by 27%, which translates to a potential extension of human lifespan by up to 16 years with no significant toxicity. The project is currently undergoing comprehensive druggability evaluation and development.
Since its inception in 2015, the China Returnee Entrepreneurship Competition has attracted 3,499 returnee project teams across seven editions, and organized dozens of service activities including training, roadshows, visits, forums and exhibitions. Among past projects that reached the finals, more than 70 have received investment and policy support, totaling over 2.3 billion yuan, demonstrating the competition's continued effectiveness. The competition has become an important platform for stimulating returnee entrepreneurship and encouraging overseas Chinese students to return and develop their careers. Since its launch in July 2021, with the joint efforts of all parties, a total of 601 returnee project teams registered and met the participation criteria, and 112 project teams were shortlisted for the semifinals after review. In the finals, 20 project teams competed, and following joint evaluation by seven judges including Zhongguancun Frontier Fund, Anji Biotech's "Anti-aging Peptide Drug R&D" ultimately ranked second in the overall score and first in the biomedical category.
