An Industrial Veteran's 18-Year Journey of Domestic Substitution: Aijie Boya Biosciences Files IPO Prospectus
In 2004, the first entrepreneurial venture was launched.Successfully developed chromatographic silica gel separation materials for analytical purposes, filling a domestic technological gap; the company’s annual revenue reached RMB 200 million ten years later.
In 2022, the second entrepreneurial venture,Established an annual production line for ton-scale industrial chromatographic silica gel separation materials, with quality matching the highest European standards.
With nearly 40 years of academic research and industrial experience in chromatography, and 18 years of entrepreneurial experience since returning to China, Dr. Wang Qunjie and his team have been both witnesses and direct participants in the rapid development of China’s chromatographic silica gel separation materials industry.
In 2016, after his first startup, Bonna-Agela Technologies, was acquired by Danaher Corporation, the world’s largest instrumentation company, this post-1960s industrialist and Nankai University chemistry graduate chose to continue pursuing his entrepreneurial ambitions. This year, he consolidated resources to establish Aijie Boya Biotechnology, based in the BioBAY (Suzhou Industrial Park Biopharmaceutical Industrial Park), shifting his primary focus from the food safety sector to the biopharmaceutical field.
In an industry where technology and craftsmanship require time to refine, Suzhou Aijie Boya Bioelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. has achieved an industrial breakthrough in the large-scale production of third-generation silica-based chromatography materials, with annual output reaching the tonnage level, directly benchmarking the highest quality standards in Europe.
Recently, VBInsight conducted an exclusive interview with Wang Qunjie, a veteran in the industry, who introduced the development trends of China’s chromatography sector and highlighted Aijie Boya Bio’s differentiated strategic layout and technological breakthroughs.
In 1985, after graduating from the Department of Chemistry at Nankai University, Wang Qunjie went to France to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Montpellier, where he later studied under Professor George A. Olah, a Nobel laureate.
In 1996, after completing his postdoctoral work at the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Wang Qunjie joined Agilent Technologies, the world’s largest chromatography instrument company, where he accumulated eight years of experience in the development and application of chromatographic materials.
“Abroad, such as in Europe and Japan, large-scale production and application of silica-based chromatography media began in the 1970s and 1980s, with continuous improvements introduced in the 1990s.” However, constrained by key technological barriers, China long remained a technological void. To advance the development of the domestic chromatography media industry, Dr. Wang Qunjie returned to China in 2004 and founded Agela Technologies, a chromatography company.
Prior to this, China lacked domestically produced high-end spherical chromatographic silica gel. It was not until 2006, when Agela Technologies secured the project “Development of High-Performance Chromatographic Separation Materials and Columns” under the National Key Technology R&D Program (11th Five-Year Plan) of the Ministry of Science and Technology, that research, development, and production commenced. Upon the project’s completion in 2009, Agela achieved the first domestic production of spherical chromatographic silica gel in China.
In his first entrepreneurial venture, Dr. Wang Qunjie seized the opportunity presented by the rapid growth of China’s food safety industry, leading Bonna-Agela Technologies to be listed among Forbes’ Most Promising Chinese Tech Companies for three consecutive years (2011–2013), with annual revenue reaching RMB 200 million. Ultimately, Bonna-Agela was acquired in 2016 by Danaher Corporation, the world’s largest instrumentation company.
In fact, in addition to the food market, Bonna-Agela has also expanded into the biopharmaceutical sector. However, due to its location in Tianjin, while most Chinese pharmaceutical companies are concentrated in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, the considerable distance has hindered the ideal development of this business segment.
In 2022, as the biopharmaceutical industry reached a critical threshold for large-scale industrialization, Dr. Wang Qunjie identified new opportunities. He integrated resources to establish Aijie Boya Bio, rooted in the Suzhou Industrial Park BioBAY. With Suzhou as its hub, the company built a nationwide network of application support and customer service centers, and established proprietary product development and manufacturing bases in Suzhou Industrial Park, Jiaxing Science and Technology City in Zhejiang, and Tianjin Binhai New Area.
Aijie Boya Biotech focuses on the promotion and application of separation technologies in biopharmaceuticals and clinical diagnostics. The company concentrates its efforts on four key areas: automated laboratory-to-industrial chromatographic separation and purification systems, industrial chromatography separation media, extraction and purification-specific adsorption materials, and related supporting processes and purification services, striving to provide comprehensive integrated solutions for separation and purification.
Under the leadership of Dr. Wang Qunjie, Aijie Boya Bio has assembled a professional technical and management team, including academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, experts from national talent programs, and senior technical professionals from renowned domestic and international enterprises and institutions. Team members possess extensive experience in process development and services in the fields of pharmaceuticals, intermediates, and natural products. The company has obtained ISO 9001 quality management system certification, and its products have received multiple qualifications and certifications, including IP54, IP20, CE (LVD, EMC, RoHS), and medical device certifications.
Silica (silicon dioxide) chromatographic packing has become the most widely used and longest-established high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) packing material due to its excellent mechanical strength, solvent resistance, superior thermal stability, and surface abundance of silanol groups that are readily modifiable. However, China currently relies almost entirely on imports for high-performance silica-based chromatographic packing materials.
Under the leadership of Dr. Wang Qunjie, Bonna-Agela was the first to achieve domestic production of spherical chromatographic silica gel. However, as the domestic market for industrial chromatographic separation and purification had not yet developed, and given that the National Ministry of Science and Technology’s project requirements specified the development of silica gel for analytical chromatography, Bonna-Agela ultimately focused on producing analytical-grade silica gel. Consequently, production volumes were limited, with sales primarily targeted at laboratory customers.
“Annual production of analytical chromatography silica gel typically amounts to only a few hundred jin, which is sufficient to meet the demands of all chromatography column manufacturers across China. This volume is far lower than that required for industrial chromatography silica gel. To date, no enterprise in China has emerged capable of large-scale, ton-level production of industrial chromatography silica gel packing materials,” said Dr. Wang Qunjie. He attributed this situation primarily to two factors: first, the technical challenges associated with silica gel chromatography packings are exceptionally high, and the quality of domestically produced silica gel chromatography packings falls significantly short of imported standards; second, China’s manufacturing processes for silica gel chromatography packings have yet to achieve scalable mass production.
After years of technological research and innovation, Aijie Boya Bio has overcome the aforementioned challenges,Achieved an industrial breakthrough in the large-scale production of third-generation silica-based chromatography materials.Regarding product quality, Dr. Wang Qunjie stated, “We have directly benchmarked our product against the most premium offering available in Europe. Based on internal testing data and results from partner clients, our product’s quality is currently very close to that of its European counterpart.”
High-quality assurance of silica gel chromatography media has laid the foundation for the comprehensive large-scale production at Aijie Boya Bio, achieved through years of process improvement.“Currently, the annual production capacity of 10 μm silica-based materials reaches 3 tons, and the annual production capacity of chromatography fillers exceeds 15 tons.”
Suzhou Aijie Boya Bioelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. also offers a wide range of new specialty chromatography separation and adsorption materials, such as organically bonded silica gels with polar, alkali-resistant, and hydrophilic properties; restricted-access media; core-shell particles; and magnetic solid-phase extraction sorbents. Its specific adsorption materials for trace metals, endotoxins, organic toxins, and phospholipids/proteins in biological samples match international mainstream products in terms of quality and stability, while offering significant price advantages.
As a member of the BIOINN ecosystem, Suzhou Aijie Boya Bioelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. has established collaborative models with numerous biopharmaceutical and fermentation enterprises,Established strategic partnerships with key clients including Ningxia Tairui Pharmaceutical, Asymchem Biologics, Ribo Life Science, CanSino Biologics, and Xinfa Pharmaceutical; forged strategic collaborations with leading non-competing industry suppliers such as WuXi AppTec, Duoning Biology, Hangzhou Cobetter, and Bojin Biotechnology.
Over the past two years, Suzhou Aijie Boya Bioelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. has completed multiple separation and purification projects involving products such as coenzyme Q10, salidroside, and a certain adenosine-based active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), with each project’s transaction value amounting to approximately RMB 10 million.
Looking ahead, Dr. Wang Qunjie has a clear plan: “The company will continue to focus on the domestic production of biological sample processing, industrial chromatography separation and purification media, and process automation equipment, further enhancing its overall competitiveness in the biopharmaceutical and IVD industries.”
Special thanks to BIOINN for their support in the interview and content creation.
As the incubation platform of the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, BIOINN adheres to the core philosophy of “Innovation · Novelty · Vitality,” focusing on sci-tech entrepreneurs. Guided by market needs and pain points, it integrates the “space chain, technology chain, industry chain, capital chain, and ecosystem chain” to provide integrated solutions for achievement transformation, enterprise incubation, and industrial agglomeration. BIOINN is committed to reducing burdens, empowering, and accelerating startups in synthetic biology, facilitating the commercialization of cutting-edge innovative projects, and driving leapfrog development in the industrial economy.