Innovation hub helps China step up collaboration with Thailand in health and life sciences
- Chinese biophysicist Rao Zhihe has been appointed hub’s first strategic scientist
- He has been working on natural anti-Covid products with Mahidol University researchers
Early in the coronavirus pandemic, prominent Chinese biophysicist Rao Zhihe and his team identified two parts of the virus that could be targeted by drugs and shared the information with scientists around the world.
“We shared them with more than 300 universities, research institutes and companies that approached our team before the findings were published,” Rao, a professor at Tsinghua and ShanghaiTech universities said in an interview in Bangkok last month on his first trip abroad in three years.
The information was shared in the hope of speeding up the development of effective drugs, he said while attending a forum with industry and university leaders on how biomedical research partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region could help to prevent the next pandemic.
Rao said the world “desperately” needed a broad-spectrum and effective antiviral drug, which his team was working towards, for the ongoing and future coronavirus pandemics, and joint efforts from international scientists were key.
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Patients in China hooked up to IV drips in their own cars as clinics are full
“I believe China and Thailand have good room for cooperation,” the former president of Nankai University in Tianjin said during the forum, which was organised by the Association of Pacific Rim Universities.