In the afternoon of July 19, 2017, Professor Ming-Wei Wang (Director of the National Center for Drug Screening/Chinese National Compound Library and Dean of School of Pharmacy, Fudan University) delivered a lecture at Merck Life Science Forum in Shanghai, entitled “Transnational medicine research in China”, where the current status of academic drug discovery was reviewed. He interacted with Alasdair Jelfs (Managing Director, Merck Holding (China) Ltd.), Benoit Opsomer (Vice President), Janny Wang (Head of Process Solutions, China), Ting Liu (Head of Research Solutions, China) and Meredith Ge (Head of Regulatory Management, Asia).  Other speakers included Dr. Min Wang Irwin (Venture Partner, Qiming Venture Partners), Dr. Lianshan Zhang (Vice President, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co., Ltd.), Dr. Kewen Jin (Chairman of BayHelix, USA), Xiangsen Kong (Jiangsu Provincial Food and Drug Administration) and Ming Li (Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences).