Congratulating remarks by Dr. Peter Kurtzhals at the NN-CAS Research Fund 10th Year Anniversary Symposium
(November 1, 2017, Beijing, China)

 
Dear Professor Yaping Zhang, dear Professor Yongqing Zhang, honoured speakers, ladies and gentlemen,

It is an honour to be here, in the beautiful CAS Campus, with many of my colleagues from NN R&D HQ in Denmark as well as from NN RCC in Beijing, to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the NN-CAS Research Fund. I also am happy to convey to you warm greetings from our Chief Science Officer and Executive Vice-President of NN, Professor Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen.

NN is a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Denmark and the biggest provider of diabetes medicine (by value) in the world. Since many decades ago, we believe that by being present in and forming partnerships in China, we can help achieve the ultimate goal of the company: to change and defeat diabetes.

Thus, NN made insulin available to Chinese patients already 55 years ago (in 1962) and 34 years later (in 1996), a brand new manufacturing plant in Tianjin was inaugurated. The Tianjin plant is our largest outside Denmark and produces today NN products both for China and for export to the rest of the world.

In 1997, we opened – as the first international pharmaceutical company – a research facility in China. Yesterday I celebrated RCC’s 20 years anniversary with about 200 colleagues.

Believing in China’s enormous resources and potential in talent and innovation, we have increased our collaborations and partnerships with Chinese academia since 1997. And since 2007, our most important partner has been the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Thanks primarily to Professor Chen Zhu (then VP of Life Sciences at CAS) and Professor Ming-Wei Wang (who will speak later today), two major initiatives were decided in 2007: The establishment of NN-CAS Research Fund based on a donation by NN of 2 million USD.

And the donation of a chemical library of approximately 300.000 compounds to a CAS facility in Shanghai. This donation, by some valued to more than 60 million dollars, became the core of the Chinese National Compound Library under the dynamic leadership of Professor Ming-Wei Wang, Director of the National Center for Drug Screening in Shanghai.

NN’s donations to NN-CAS Research Fund have since increased with approximately 4 million USD. The Fund has supported approximately 70 joint projects, generated a large number of peer reviewed publications and helped to create many mutually beneficial and trusting relations between CAS and NN scientists. Today we will hear examples of some of these projects in addition to presentations by leading scientists from CAS and other academic institutions in China. I expect that you will enjoy the day, and hope that many new ideas of future innovative scientific collaborations will emerge.

In closing, I would like to thank the chair of the NN-CAS steering committee, VP of CAS, Professor Yaping Zhang and the chair of the NN-CAS Research Fund Board professor Yongqing Zhang for their time and efforts to help the Fund to become a success. I also would like to thank current and past chairs and board members for their contributions. In particular, I would like to express my special thanks and recognition to Professor Boerge Diderichsen who with his visionary outlook and his never ending persistence has been instrumental from conception and throughout the lifetime of the fund. And to extend a special thanks to Professor Ming-Wei Wang, a board member since 2007, who with his incredible energy, enthusiasm and creativity has been an essential force in creating the NN-CAS Research Fund and driving it forward.

And now, I look forward to turn the attention to the scientific exchange, which is what we are really here for. Science has always been a very effective way to cross borders and to bring people together across continents.

Thank you.