China-based start-up company Shanghai BravoBio is dedicated to developing new types of human vaccines to fight against emerging infectious diseases and meet the demand of increasing quality of life. Besides, BravoBio also has plans and potential to explore other diagnostics and therapeutic macro-molecules, for instance monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), fusion proteins, among others.

Shanghai BravoBio was established in March 2011 by Dr Wu Ke along with a team that has more than 20 years of experience in process and method development, cell culture optimization, antigen purification, formulation, sterile filling and packaging.

The management has a strong and effective network in the biotech industry, both in public and private sectors. Hence, inspite of being a young company, BravoBio has knowledge of quality control, quality assurance, pre-clinical and clinical planning, regulatory submissions and inspections, management and operations under GMP, engineering, facility evaluation, maintenance, as well as marketing and post-marketing surveillance.

"All members of BravoBio's management come from the same biotech company. As colleagues, they share a common dream which was restrained in the former framework, so they decided to set up a platform of their own to make the dream come true," says Dr Wu Ke, founder and president, who has 23 years of experience in biopharma industry and has successfully developed seven products approved by the SFDA and marketed in China.
As a self-funded start-up, BravoBio is seeking potential investors who share the same value. But before capital flow-in, BravoBio had already set up two joint ventures with different partners, one with a national biopharmaceuticals marketing company, another with a top institute of China Academy of Sciences.

In the coming years, BravoBio will keep collaborating with strategic partners and expand its business to R&D of proprietary vaccines, diagnostic kits and mAbs; manufacturing and marketing of propriety and generic vaccines and kits; international trading, including technology, patents, bulk and final brand products of biopharmaceuticals.

Giving his view on China's focus on developing international standard vaccines and the potential of country's human capital to lead the task, Dr Wu Ke opines, "China has the biggest biotech-related talent pool in the world having about 1.7 million natural sciences graduates annually and among them, about a hundred thousand graduates are from different fields of life sciences. These well-educated talents can evolve to form the main force for the development of the vaccine industry in China. Meanwhile, the IP environment has improved dramatically in the past few years. China is now the second largest country in patent application as well as scientific paper publications, and will surpass the US before 2020 or even earlier." 

"The central and local governments give strong support to hi-tech development, and vaccine has been included in the national development strategy. Capital from governments along with private funds are now active in seeking any opportunity in this area. Last year, the Chinese vaccine regulatory system passed the assessment from WHO. Made-in-China vaccines will be accepted by more countries soon and will be beneficial to more population worldwide," says Dr Wu Ke. He is hopeful that BravoBio will be able to position itself in the international market very soon.

BravoBio will be fully engaged in the integration of various resources by being a bridge between investors and industries, a bond between academies and industries, a mediator between domestic and international partners. Quality and efficiency will be the two core competences of BravoBio, believes Dr Wu Ke.