In August 2025, the independently developed “Recombinant Porcine Follitropin Fc Fusion Protein for Injection” by Beijing VJTBio Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “VJTBio”) was approved as a National Class I New Veterinary Drug, becoming China’s first innovative animal biopharmaceutical with complete independent intellectual property rights and a global patent portfolio. In December of the same year, the company’s “Canine Anti-PD-1 Monoclonal Antibody JEN-102” completed the first overseas out-licensing (BD) transaction in China’s pet antibody drug field. From filling a domestic gap to achieving the first overseas licensing deal, VJTBio has established itself as a leader in China’s innovative animal pharmaceutical sector. This reflects China’s animal health innovation sector transitioning from “catching up” to “keeping pace” with the world.
For a long time, China’s animal drug market has been dominated by multinational giants. With the continued implementation of national policies to reduce and restrict antibiotic use, the increasing intensification of livestock farming, and the pet economy entering a hundred-billion-yuan market, the animal health industry is undergoing structural transformation. Against this backdrop, how can companies overcome technical barriers and secure a place in the global market? During the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Conference, Luo Haoshu, founder of VJTBio, accepted an exclusive interview with a reporter from Beijing Business Today, sharing his insights and perspectives on the development of innovative animal drugs from multiple dimensions, including product breakthroughs, technology platform expansion, and internationalization pathways.
01 Solving Reproduction and Disease Challenges
In China’s swine farming sector, sow reproductive efficiency directly affects production costs and economic returns. For a long time, domestic animal reproduction regulation drugs have relied primarily on pregnant mare serum extracts. These traditional drugs suffer from poor batch-to-batch stability, high risks of disease transmission, and insufficient regulation precision, failing to meet the batch production needs of large-scale farming. This results in persistently high farming costs and makes it difficult to meet food safety and green farming requirements.
VJTBio’s “Recombinant Porcine Follitropin Fc Fusion Protein for Injection” represents a disruptive replacement for these traditional drugs. As China’s first innovative animal biopharmaceutical with complete independent intellectual property rights and a global patent portfolio, this product utilizes CHO cell industrial production to completely eliminate the constraints of natural raw material bottlenecks, achieving core technology self-sufficiency. “It not only precisely regulates follicular development in sows, significantly improving reproductive efficiency and helping pig farms achieve substantial cost reduction and efficiency gains, but also achieves zero chemical residues at the source of farming, providing solid technical support for national food security and livestock product safety,” Luo stated.
After solving the “birth” challenge, the next priority is disease prevention and control during the “rearing” process. Luo further pointed out that in the field of animal disease prevention and control, mRNA vaccines are widely recognized as a core technology leading the industry’s transformative development. However, their R&D and industrialization face multiple challenges, including species differences, viral mutations, and cost barriers.
“We have independently built a novel RNA vaccine technology platform, integrating core technologies such as AI large-model epitope prediction, RNA sequence deep optimization, and immune memory enhancement, achieving full-cycle coverage from R&D to pilot production. On the hardware front, we are actively advancing the construction of Beijing’s first GMP-compliant RNA vaccine production facility, with a planned annual capacity of 50 million doses. We aim to solve mass production and cost control challenges through modular, flexible manufacturing,” Luo explained. “Through these efforts, we hope to fill the application gap of cutting-edge biotechnologies such as novel RNA vaccines in the animal health field.”
02 The Blue Ocean Opportunity of Pet Antibody Drugs
While achieving breakthroughs in the economic animal sector, VJTBio has also set its sights on pet antibody drugs. The company has established a one-stop pet antibody drug development platform covering target discovery, canine-derived modification, process development, and industrialization.
In December 2025, VJTBio’s independently developed canine anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody JEN-102 entered into an agreement with Jenga Biosciences, a US-based clinical-stage veterinary oncology company. Under the agreement, Jenga Biosciences obtained rights to develop, manufacture, and commercialize JEN-102 in global markets outside of China. This marks the first overseas out-licensing (BD) transaction in China’s pet antibody drug field, with potential milestone payments exceeding $100 million.
“As pets gain higher status within families, demand for oncology and chronic disease treatments has surged. Yet, globally approved drugs are extremely scarce, leading to severe supply shortages. Innovative pet drugs are seen as the next blue-ocean market. However, for Chinese companies to secure a place in this arena, multiple challenges remain: high species specificity means human drugs cannot be directly translated and require de novo R&D; early-stage R&D requires high investment, long cycles, and carries significant risks; regulatory systems are still being refined; and market education and veterinary diagnostic systems need further development,” Luo noted.
These challenges also constitute core innovation barriers in the animal innovative drug field. In response, VJTBio is attempting to provide solutions from the R&D perspective. “VJTBio has a mature CHO cell expression system, leveraging synthetic biology technologies to empower biomanufacturing and overcome the core challenge of cost reduction in economic animal drug industrialization. At the same time, the company is pursuing dual tracks: economic animal reproduction regulation and pet oncology antibody drugs. Supported by China Agricultural University’s industry-academia-research resources and National Key R&D Program funding, VJTBio has established a global IP portfolio combining ‘pipeline patents’ and ‘platform patents.’ Through its end-to-end, platform-based, and internationalized original R&D capabilities, the company has built industry-leading core competitiveness,” Luo stated.
03 From “Technology Following” to “Global Leapfrogging”
To date, VJTBio’s “Recombinant Porcine Follitropin Fc Fusion Protein for Injection” has received patent grants in multiple countries including the United States and Russia. Its canine anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody JEN-102 has also completed the first overseas out-licensing (BD) transaction in China’s pet antibody drug field, marking the official entry of Chinese animal innovative drugs into the global capital perspective.
In Luo’s view, for Chinese animal innovative drugs to go global, they must overcome four major thresholds: technology adaptation, cost control, patent portfolio strategy, and regulatory systems. As China’s R&D systems substantively align with international standards, models like JEN-102 - where a preclinical-stage molecule achieves a hundred-million-dollar licensing deal - are transitioning from “accidental” to “commonplace,” becoming a core metric for measuring the value of indigenous innovation.
From an industry perspective, Luo pointed out that the next five years represent a critical window for Chinese animal innovative drugs to transition from “technology following” to “value-originating innovation” and then to “global leapfrogging.” Over the past two decades, cutting-edge biotechnologies accumulated in human biopharmaceuticals - such as monoclonal antibodies, synthetic biology, and RNA vaccines - are rapidly penetrating the animal health field, filling the long-standing “technology gap” and achieving cross-species technology adaptation. Technological convergence will become the core driving force behind this round of industry transformation.
At the same time, the industry’s competitive threshold is shifting from a “single molecule” to “one-stop, end-to-end platform capabilities.” The companies that will succeed in the future are no longer those relying solely on one innovative target or a blockbuster product, but those possessing full-chain integration capabilities - from target discovery and process development to large-scale cost-reducing production - to address complex interspecies differences and stringent cost challenges.