Yunque Medical, Borcheng and Wuxi AppTec Launch Strategic Collaboration to Bring Gastrointestinal Cancer Early Screening Services to Grassroots Communities
On January 10, 2022, Yunque Medical Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (“Yunque Yi”), Boercheng (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (“Boercheng”), and Shanghai WuXi Apptec Medical Testing Co., Ltd. (“WuXi Apptec Medical Testing”) signed a tripartite strategic cooperation agreement. The three parties will deeply integrate their respective advantageous resources to jointly promote the implementation of early screening services for gastrointestinal cancers at the primary care level, helping the general public in grassroots communities enhance their prevention awareness and identify potential disease risks.
It is reported that, through this collaboration, Yunqueyi will leverage its capacity for education and training as well as service outreach to millions of primary care physicians, thereby enhancing awareness of early prevention and screening for gastrointestinal cancers at the grassroots level. This initiative aims to shift the paradigm from passive treatment to proactive prevention, thus promoting Boercheng’s early gastric cancer detection product, Sibowei.®SiboDing®, an early colorectal cancer screening product, is being deployed at the grassroots level to help local residents achieve early detection, diagnosis, and intervention for major diseases. By SiboWei®, Siboding®Patients who test positive in initial screening will receive professional tumor genotyping services provided by WuXi Apptec. This collaboration is expected to screen over 100,000 residents in primary care settings for early signs of gastric and colorectal cancer.
Since July 2021, when Yunqueyi partnered with New Horizon Health to promote the decentralization of colorectal cancer early screening to primary care settings, Yunqueyi has, to date, established collaborations with multiple early-screening test companies specializing in colorectal, gastric, hepatic, lung, and bladder cancers, as well as in the fields of gastroenterology and immunology. This has made Yunqueyi the preferred partner for leading industry players seeking to expand their presence in primary care.
From left to right: Li Bo, CMO of Borui Cheng; He Ke, Vice President of Yunqueyi; and Liao Minfu, Head of Innovative Business at WuXi Apptec Diagnostics.
According to the "2020 Global Cancer Statistics" released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization, gastrointestinal cancers account for 45% of cancer-related deaths in China. China bears an extremely heavy burden of digestive system tumors, with substantial incidence and mortality rates. Over the past four decades, cases of digestive tract cancers have accounted for 22.7% of all new cancer cases in the country, with nearly 85% of patients diagnosed at an intermediate or advanced stage.
Faced with a grim situation, it is imperative to urgently raise public awareness of early cancer screening and detection. More than 500 million people in China live in rural areas, where awareness of early cancer screening among the grassroots population is severely lacking and diagnostic facilities are critically insufficient due to economic, environmental, and educational factors. Promoting early cancer screening at the grassroots level, shifting from passive treatment to active prevention, hinges on the training and service capabilities of primary care physicians as a key element for the successful implementation of related products. Primary care physicians, who maintain close ties with the 500 million residents in counties and townships, have become the vanguard in popularizing disease prevention awareness.
After reaching urban users through collaborations with health checkup centers, hospitals, and insurance companies, the cancer early screening industry has entered a new phase: penetrating county and township markets via mature primary healthcare service platforms to serve a broader base of primary-care target users. Since 2021, players in the early screening testing sector have increasingly focused on the primary-care market, collectively recognizing that the successful deployment of related products hinges on the engagement of millions of primary-care physicians and healthcare institutions.
Yunqueyi has been deeply engaged in digital services for primary healthcare for over five years, becoming China’s largest digital empowerment platform for primary care. As of December 31, 2021, the Yunqueyi platform had covered more than 390,000 primary healthcare institutions, with 2.6 million registered primary healthcare professionals and 1.8 million annual active users, reaching over 800 million residents nationwide. Therefore, Yunqueyi possesses unique advantages in helping leading companies in the early screening and testing industry secure their position in the primary care sector. Since July 2021, more than 200,000 primary care physicians have used the Yunqueyi APP to assist residents in early screening for cancer and other diseases, cumulatively screening nearly 1 million individuals in primary care communities for potential health risks.
He Ke, Vice President of Yunqueyi, stated, “As a digital service platform rooted in the primary healthcare market, Yunqueyi can provide comprehensive grassroots implementation services for the early screening and testing industry. We believe this collaboration will enhance disease prevention and detection capabilities at the primary care level, facilitate the downward flow of high-quality medical resources, address the shortage of medical resources in township areas, and promote early diagnosis, early treatment, and early recovery, thereby contributing Yunqueyi’s strength to the construction of a Healthy China.”
Boercheng has been deeply engaged in the field of gene methylation for over a decade, with multiple products under its portfolio being first-of-their-kind in China. Among them, Siboding® is the first blood-based gene methylation detection product for colorectal cancer approved by the NMPA in China, and Sibowei®It is the only blood-based gene methylation test for gastric cancer approved in China. Currently, two products have been successively included in Fujian Province as high-value in vitro diagnostic items (Siboding®), Beijing (Siboding®, Sibowei®) medical insurance. In addition, the company has built a robust product pipeline, with investigational products covering esophageal cancer, lung cancer, multiple gastrointestinal cancers, and NGS-based pan-cancer screening.
Li Bo, CMO of Borui Cheng, stated, “By combining blood-based gene methylation detection technology with a quantitative fluorescent PCR platform, the sensitivity for early-stage cancer detection can reach 5–10 times that of traditional tumor markers, making it suitable for single-cancer and multi-cancer joint early screening at the primary care level. Borui Cheng looks forward to collaborating with partners across the industry chain to jointly expand the broader application of gene methylation technology in the early detection, diagnosis, and intervention of major diseases.”
As China’s first enabling platform company to practice integrated diagnostics, WuXi NextCODE possesses a medical laboratory with full-discipline practice qualifications and CAP accreditation, capable of providing professional gastrointestinal cancer testing services for this collaboration.
Liao Minfu, Head of Innovative Business at WuXi NextCODE, stated, “WuXi NextCODE remains committed to advancing integrated diagnostics and collaborating with diverse partners to build an ecosystem encompassing diagnosis, treatment, pharmaceuticals, and insurance, with the vision of making no disease difficult to diagnose. Through this deep collaboration with Yunqueyi and Boercheng, we jointly provide early screening and precise diagnosis of gastrointestinal cancers for primary-care patients, ensuring more timely and accurate diagnoses. In the future, we will work together to achieve breakthroughs in ‘the last mile’ of primary-care screening for other major diseases, contributing to the Healthy China 2030 initiative.”
Yunque Medical Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., incubated from WuXi AppTec in 2016, is China’s leading digital empowerment platform for primary healthcare, dedicated to empowering primary care and safeguarding public health. Built on the foundation of “education and training,” connected through “upward referrals,” and supported by “preventive screening and testing,” the platform has established a comprehensive, integrated service ecosystem for primary healthcare encompassing five key areas: early preventive screening, upward referrals, primary care testing, primary care medication, and follow-up rehabilitation. As of December 2021, Yunque Med had covered more than 390,000 primary healthcare institutions and over 2.6 million primary healthcare professionals, with more than 1.8 million monthly active users, reaching over 800 million residents, thereby establishing a nationwide primary healthcare service network.
Borui Cheng (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., founded in 2006, has become an industry leader by deeply cultivating the fields of early detection, early diagnosis, and early intervention for major diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and geriatric conditions. Borui Cheng is committed to building China’s first industrial group focused on the market for four major chronic diseases. Grounded in epigenomics theory and aiming to “save resources, save lives, and reduce costs” for the nation and its citizens, the company provides products and services for the early detection, diagnosis, and intervention of major diseases that are early-stage, precise, safe, highly compliant, and broadly applicable, thereby achieving benefits for the country, the people, partners, and itself.
WuXi Diagnostics was established in 2018 and serves as the sole official diagnostic partner of Mayo Clinic Laboratories in China, with its headquarters located in Shanghai. As China’s first enabling platform company to practice integrated diagnostics, the company operates a medical laboratory licensed across all disciplines and accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP). It has established a global industrialization base in Suzhou, certified under the ISO 13485 quality management system for medical devices, and set up an R&D center for innovative clinical diagnostic programs in Rochester, USA.