武翔博士：让诺奖得主都颇感意外！药明康德为客户打造了怎样的全面化学能力？| 逐梦者说 | Bilingual

编者按：“让天下没有难做的药，难治的病”，是初心，更是愿景。二十五年来，药明康德步履不停：从一间实验室，到覆盖亚洲、欧洲和北美的全球网络。从早期的化学合成服务，到贯穿研究（R）、开发（D）和生产（M）的一体化平台。从第一位客户，到全球三十多个国家的数千合作伙伴。不断发展的，是规模与能力；始终坚守的，是梦想与承诺。

致敬来时路，共谱新篇章！在二十五周年之际，我们以“逐梦者”视角，回顾药明康德成长发展的峥嵘岁月，回望赋能客户创新的并肩往事，更以独特的“药明精神”展望未来新篇章。

2019年春天，普林斯顿大学的David MacMillan教授来到药明康德，带来了一场关于光化学应用的精彩讲座。那时，他专注研究的“光氧化还原催化反应”，正在有机化学和制药行业掀起创新浪潮。

交流中，这名两年后的诺奖得主随口问起：“你们现在用到光化学技术了吗？”

答案出乎他的意料：在座的化学家们反馈，他们从这一先进技术诞生之初，就将其应用到了日常工作中。当时，公司完成的光化学反应数量早已破万。

“我们常常听到合作伙伴评价说，能把前沿化学技术应用得如此广泛、如此深入的公司，没有几家。”回忆起这段往事，药明康德高级副总裁、研发化学服务部（RCS）负责人武翔博士感慨道。

武翔博士在药明康德工作了十几年时间。从天津、武汉、成都，再到上海，他一路见证了公司研发化学团队的发展壮大，也亲历了无数个如那天一样的，令他倍感自豪的平常时刻。

为客户节省约40%的时间

十多年前，武翔博士寻求职业发展时与药明康德“偶遇”。当时有两家公司向他抛来了橄榄枝，第一家公司的流程走了两个月，仍在缓慢的推进中；而药明康德所有的面试、参观、发offer，一切都在短短5天内完成，这令他大受震撼。

“我从未经历过这样的速度和效率。当时我就想，一定要加入这家公司，和这样的团队一起工作。”武翔博士对那段经历记忆犹新。

如今，作为研发化学团队的负责人，他正带领团队亲身践行着“药明速度”。

在不久前药明康德举办的投资者开放日上，一组内部数据显示：近年来研发化学团队向客户交付临床前候选化合物（PCC）的平均耗时仅13.7个月。

相比之下，行业常规通常需要两年左右的时间。“这意味着，仅仅在交付PCC环节，药明康德的服务就能为客户节省约40%的时间。”武翔博士表示。

在这背后，既有创新技术的持续赋能，更得益于药明康德CRDMO赋能平台的一体化优势。

真正的一体化，意味着在同一个平台上实现多团队的高效协同。药明康德的研发端（R）赋能平台，汇聚了研发化学、生物学、药效评价及安全性评价等多个团队，形成了覆盖早期发现阶段的一站式服务体系。

与此同时，从R端到开发和生产（D和M）端的药明康德一体化CRDMO化学业务平台，也使得活性分子能够更顺畅地从R端转移至D和M端，从而全流程、无缝衔接地加速客户项目的推进。

“化学、生物、工艺开发与生产等每个环节都必须做到极致，才能真正赢得客户的信任。”武翔博士表示，“在药明康德，团队从未停止探索，如何持续优化，从而最大程度加快客户项目的推进速度。”

如今，研发化学团队已经赢得了全球数千家客户的长期信赖，其中合作5年以上的客户超过980家，合作10年以上的有280家，更有10多家客户与其合作了超过20年，几乎贯穿了药明康德成立25周年以来的整个周期。

43万+个化合物，意味着什么？

在对话中，武翔博士提到：在过去一年时间内，研发化学团队累计合成并交付了超过43万个化合物。

或许有人会问：这个数字究竟意味着什么？以下几组数据能给出答案：

首先，其构建了一个高产且优质的“分子宝库”。2024年，已有104个为客户合成的分子进入PCC阶段，它们都是从这些化合物库中脱颖而出的“潜力股”，未来有望转化为真正惠及患者的创新疗法。

另一组数据显示，过去3年中，高于1亿美元的小分子药物交易中，60%使用了药明康德的研发化学服务；2024年获得投资的客户中，90%在融资前就在与药明康德合作。某一种角度上，药明康德化学合成的交付能力为早期客户提供了融资的重要助力。

更值得关注的是，这是在分子复杂度持续提升的背景下实现的。“按照传统的里宾斯基五规则（Lipinski's rule of five），化合物的分子量不能超过500道尔顿，但现在不少新分子类型的分子量都在1000以上了。”武翔博士补充道。

随着分子结构日益复杂，合成工作量和难度同步攀升，对新的合成路线、技术方法以及配套的分析、分离与纯化能力都提出了更高要求。

“我有时见到同事都‘愁眉苦脸’的，因为他们要去合成之前从来没有人合成出来过的分子。”武翔博士笑着说道，“这些探索性的工作必然存在许多挑战。”

一座座无人攀登的险峰，总要有第一位开路者。逢山开路，遇水搭桥。“我们的同事也不断攻克这一个个难题，最终在药明康德首次合成出来这些分子，然后交付给我们的客户。”武翔博士补充说道，“你如果了解研发化学的工作，就知道整个过程是极为枯燥的。所以每年四十多万个化合物，不仅是我们对客户的承诺，也是我们研发化学团队同事们成长和奋斗的见证。”

随时准备迎接新挑战

2016年前后，武翔博士和团队在研究中初次接触到靶向蛋白降解剂（TPD）这类复杂分子。

“那是我和同事们第一次见到分子量如此之大、结构如此‘奇特’的分子。我们之前都没有接触过这样的化学结构，但这并没有让团队退缩，反而激发了大家迎难而上的劲头。”武翔博士回忆道。

那时，靶向蛋白降解在行业还是一个比较新的概念。在客户的研发需求下，药明康德开始快速构建服务于这类分子的一体化赋能平台，也在后来的时间里见证了它从实验室走向产业的转化全程。

这十年来，共有超过18.8万种复杂的靶向蛋白降解化合物从药明康德的平台走出，其中70多种已进入临床前候选药物阶段，10多种已进入后期开发阶段。“能通过我们的服务，让这些新药推进到临床阶段，还是很有成就感的。”

特定的新分子类型之外，武翔博士还提到其团队如何用“流动化学”等创新技术赋能客户——在普通的化学反应中，存在一个放大的过程，而这个过程往往充满挑战。在10毫克的小规模反应中非常成功的合成方法，要用来合成1公斤的分子，并不是简单把所有原料都扩大十万倍就可以。

“通常来讲，这要花大量的时间探索别的合成路线，才能解决放大过程中存在的问题。”武翔博士说道，“而流动化学可以有效解决这个挑战。”

简单来说，流动化学就像是在一根水管里进行化学反应，所有的原料和反应都是持续流动的。从毫克级的探索到公斤级的制备，中间并没有一个明显的分界线，而是可以自然地进行放大。

“如果R端的反应条件无缝放大至D与M端，就可以帮助客户大幅节省时间与精力。”

本文开头让后来的诺奖得主MacMillan教授大感意外的光化学领域，同样也是研发化学团队系统布局的方向之一。武翔博士介绍说，他们将光化学与流动化学等新兴技术结合，取长补短，有效突破各个技术瓶颈，提升合成效率。

这也能为客户快速交付高质量的化合物。据估计，超过九成的合作伙伴都能从这套“先进合成工具箱”里受益。

“我们无法用旧方法解决新问题。所以我们必须付出更多努力，始终保持开放心态，随时准备迎接新挑战。”武翔博士说道。

为实现伟大愿景而努力

在世界各地的许多角落，药明康德团队亲手为客户们合成的无数个创新分子，正默默改变着众多患者的命运。这也正是药明康德始终坚守的愿景——让天下没有难做的药，没有难治的病。

“人类疾病还存在许多未知，不少疾病至今仍缺乏有效的治疗手段。但我坚信，随着一代又一代人不断努力，我们终将实现这一伟大愿景。”武翔博士说道。

武博士至今对一个场景记忆犹新：在合成了一款小分子化合物后，他的团队在多年后读到了客户发表的临床数据。其中，一些肺癌患者在用药短短几周后，病灶便显著缩小。即便没有接受过专业的医学训练，也能清晰地用肉眼看出治疗前后的变化。

“正是无数个那样的时刻，让我们真切感受到创新药物如何实实在在地改变患者的生命。那种成就感，无可替代。”

Always Ready: The Speed of Discovery

Editor’s Note: “Every drug can be made and every disease can be treated”. Over the past 25 years, from a single laboratory to a global network spanning Asia, Europe, and North America; from early chemical synthesis services to an integrated platform that connects Research (R), Development (D), and Manufacturing (M); from its very first customer to thousands of partners across more than 30 countries, WuXi AppTec has never stopped moving forward to realize its enduring vision.

In tribute to the journey and in celebration of new beginnings, we look back through the eyes of our “dream-makers”: revisiting the stories of partnership that empowered global innovation, and the unique spirit that continues to guide us toward the next chapter.

When the then-future Nobel laureate Prof. David MacMillan visited WuXi AppTec in 2019, he shared his vision for an emerging field, photoredox catalysis, a frontier in organic chemistry and a powerful strategy for activating small molecules. After his talk, he asked whether WuXi AppTec’s chemists had tried applying the technology.

The answer caught him off guard. They had not only tried it, they had already conducted 10,000 photochemical reactions.

Dr. Xiang Wu was among the audience. To him, that moment underscored a familiar pattern at WuXi AppTec: an instinct to engage early with promising methods and quickly translate them at scale for clients.

The Fast Start

For Wu, now Senior Vice President and Head of WuXi AppTec’s Research Chemistry Services (RCS), speed was the reason he joined.

Fifteen years ago, Wu faced two job opportunities. The first company’s process was so layered and deliberate that two months after his first conversation, he was still in the middle of a series of interviews.

Then he had a very different experience with WuXi AppTec. From résumé submission to phone interview, on-site visit, and final offer — five days.

“That speed felt unprecedented,” Wu recalled. “If the company could move with such decisiveness in hiring, I knew they must bring the same discipline and urgency to their science.”

That first impression proved accurate. Today, Wu leads a department responsible for accelerating early-stage chemistry for partners worldwide. According to the data,WuXi AppTec’s teams have cut the industry-standard timeline for delivering a preclinical candidate (PCC) from roughly two years to just 13.7 months on average.

“This means that, even just in the delivery of the PCC stage, we can help clients save about 40% of the time,” says Wu.

Behind that compression lies not only technological innovation but also the structural power of WuXi AppTec’s integrated CRDMO model: the company’s signature platform linking Research (R), Development (D), and Manufacturing (M) in a single continuum.

At the Research end, chemists work shoulder-to-shoulder with biologists, pharmacologists, and safety experts, creating a one-stop system that supports the entire early discovery stage. Those same molecules then flow seamlessly downstream into the Development and Manufacturing phases, maintaining continuity, data integrity, and speed.

“In the past, chemists worked mainly within chemistry,” Wu says. “Now, every project demands collaboration across biology, analytics, and process development. Only by integrating all these disciplines can we truly support clients from discovery through manufacturing.”

That approach has built loyalty measured not in quarters but in decades. WuXi AppTec’s chemistry teams now serve thousands of clients worldwide: 980 partnerships lasting more than five years, 280 beyond ten, and over a dozen exceeding twenty, spanning nearly the entire twenty-five-year history of the company itself.

The Weight of 430,000+ Molecules

In the past year, the RCS teams synthesized more than 430,000 compounds.

Each compound is a sliver of possibility, part of a vast molecular library that feeds the global drug-discovery pipeline. In 2024 alone, 104 of those molecules advanced to preclinical candidate status, the point where an idea becomes a viable contender for a future medicine. For Wu, each one carries the potential to change a patient’s life.

What makes those numbers more remarkable is the rising difficulty of the task. “According to the classic Lipinski's Rule of Five, a molecule’s weight shouldn’t exceed 500 daltons,” Wu says. “Now, many of the new ones are over 1,000.” The heavier the molecule, the trickier the synthesis. “You can think of them as ten-story buildings compared to the five-story ones we used to build,” he adds.

Inside the labs, that complexity shows on the faces of the chemists. “Sometimes I see colleagues with furrowed brows,” Wu says. “They’re working on compounds no one has ever made before.” Each experiment is a small act of exploration, a climb toward an unexplored summit.

Someone, after all, must be the first to chart the way. And for Wu’s teams, those countless trials and the endless iterations are their daily climbs.

Wu often reflects on his early years as a Ph.D. student, when synthesizing a few hundred compounds over several years was considered a major accomplishment. Today, his teams achieve something far greater.

“The 440,000+ compounds we deliver each year are not just numbers,” Wu says. “They are our promise to clients, proof of how far we can push the boundaries of chemistry.”

Always Ready for the Next Challenge

In 2016, Wu and his team encountered a new class of molecules that looked nothing like the compounds they had worked with before: targeted protein degraders, large, intricate structures that defied convention.

“It was the first time we had ever seen molecules so big, with such unusual structures,” Wu recalled. “None of us had handled this kind of chemistry before. But instead of hesitating, everyone leaned in. The challenge itself became the motivation.”

At the time, targeted protein degradation was more theory than mainstream science. Few companies had the infrastructure or experience to handle such complexity. WuXi AppTec moved quickly, building an integrated platform to support this new modality from discovery through development.

Ten years later,the team has synthesized more than 188,000 complex degraders for its clients. Over 70 have advanced to preclinical candidate status, and more than ten are already in late-stage development.

“It’s incredibly rewarding to see our work help new therapies reach the clinic,” Wu says. “That’s why we do this.”

But his teams don’t stop at the molecular level. They rethink how molecules are made, continually adopting and advancing frontier technologies such as flow chemistry.

Wu explained that in a traditional setting, scaling up a chemical reaction can be treacherous: a process that works perfectly on a 10-milligram scale might collapse entirely at a kilogram.

Flow chemistry changes that. Instead of a single static batch, the reaction happens inside a continuously moving stream. “It’s like a chemical process flowing through a pipe,” Wu says.

In this innovative setup, conditions remain steady; output simply depends on how long the flow runs. This design minimizes the risk of failure during scale-up and allows scientists to adjust conditions in real time. “From milligrams to kilograms, there’s no sharp boundary. It’s just continuous chemistry,” Wu explains.

“If the reaction conditions at the Research stage can be seamlessly scaled to the Development and Manufacturing stages, it can save clients enormous time and effort,” he adds.

By combining flow chemistry with other emerging technologies like photochemistry, the team can effectively break through technical bottlenecks and improve synthetic efficiency.

According to Wu, it is estimated that more than 90 percent of partners have benefited from this “advanced synthesis toolbox.”

Yet for Wu, the point isn’t speed for speed’s sake, it’s readiness. “We can’t solve new problems with old methods,” he says. “So we keep learning, keep experimenting, and stay open to what’s next. The real challenge is to be always ready, long before the industry even knows it needs you.”

The Meaning of Speed

“Chemistry can be repetitive and full of failure,” Wu acknowledged. “But behind each molecule is the same question: What if this one works?”

One experience made that question deeply personal. Years after Wu and his colleagues helped synthesize a small molecule compound for a client, they read the results in a published paper: the drug, used to treat lung cancer, had shrunk tumors in some patients dramatically within weeks, no advanced medical degree was needed to tell the difference.

For the chemists who had spent months optimizing reactions and purification steps, the results were transformative. “They realized that the compound they had worked so hard to create was now helping real patients,” Wu says. “It was a profound reminder of why we do what we do.”

That connection from a molecule’s first synthesis to a patient’s recovery captures the quiet significance of their work. Each success rests on thousands of unseen experiments, each failure paving the way for future breakthroughs. Together, they represent a collective effort to make new medicines possible.

免责声明：本文 仅作信息交流之目的，文中观点不代表药明康德立场，亦不代表药明康德支持或反对文中观点。本文也不是治疗方案推荐。如需获得治疗 方案指导，请前往正规医院就诊。

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