Speaking of the process of raising capital for an early project, Dr. Li was very upbeat. “People are willing to talk to us. We have been having discussions [with investors] for the past three to four months,” he said. “The ChinaBio Investment Forum helped get the word out, and the [Most Promising Company] prize will make the process go more quickly,” he added.

The new funding certainly takes Shenogen further than the same amount of money would do in the US. Besides the obvious China advantage, Shenogen makes its money go further by using the virtual model of biopharma development. Shenogen has a strong management team as well as a scientific advisory board. “Professor Elwood Jensen, V. Craig Jordan and Sohaib Khan are distinguished scientists in the ER and breast cancer field. Our R&D will progress rapidly with their help,” Li said. As employees, the company has only the four principals and then 15 managers, who oversee the out-sourced development of Shenogen’s various programs.

Prospects

SNG-162 will be initially investigated as a treatment for tamoxifen-resistant breast cancer, and it will eventually be tested as a first-line breast cancer therapy. However, it has its best chance of becoming a first-line treatment in endometrial cancer, because tamoxifen is known in some cases to cause endometrial cancer.

Dr. Li thinks that SNG-162 could be on the market in as little as five to seven years, if the early clinical tests prove to be positive. He anticipates 14 months to complete Phase I trials and two to three years for Phase II. Phase III trials are too far in the future to fully anticipate.

Besides SNG-162, Shenogen is working on a biomarker that will identify patients with high counts of ER-a36 receptors. This will help characterize the type of breast cancer in an individual patient, and it will also be predictive of the probability for success of tamoxifen.

In addition, work will continue on SNG-162 for the other types of cancer in which estrogen plays a part. Because of the significant of ER-a36 for estrogen signaling, Shenogen feels that monoclonal antibody and siRNA attempts to prevent or treat breast cancer can best be targeted at membrane associated ER-a36. Shenogen owns the IP for this, as it does for most of the ER-a36 centered therapies.

Shenogen is also developing an MTP (microsomal triglyceride transfer protein) inhibitor for obesity. In an early three-week study, SNG-5075 lowered food uptake by 70%.

Summary

Even the company’s name, Shenogen, reflects the commingling of East and West. “Shenogen” was formed from three syllables: Shen Nong Gen. Shen Nong is the name of a famous practitioner of TCM, while Gen connotes the world of modern westernized medicine, once again tying together the pharmaceutical worlds of West and East.

Shenogen is an innovative China biopharma that is using a TCM molecule as a way of treating diseases that affect both patients in both the West and the East. Despite the great advances made in treating breast cancer, much remains to be done. With its new target and new compounds, Shenogen is contributing to Dr. Li’s goal of potentially helping people and China’s biopharma industry. Shenogen is a blend of the East and the West, precisely the goal of Dr. Li when he returned to China.