Hugobiotech receives the Biotechnology award at the China Technology Excellence Awards 2021

The firm developed PACEseq, the most innovative pathogenic data AI analysis system.

Infectious diseases, accompanying us from the very start of the human race, ever since hundreds of thousands years ago, were poorly diagnosed due to the lack of proper methods. Over 50% of the etiological pathogens of patients with infectious diseases could not be identified. In addition, the abuse of anti-microbial drugs and the emergence of multi-drug resistant pathogens have become a growing threat to the global healthcare system. Hugobiotech, a rising star in the field of clinical pathogen diagnosis, developed PACEseq, one of the first metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) diagnostic and analytical system in the world, to speed up and improve the accuracy of pathogen detection. This high-throughput DNA sequencing based state-of-the-art technology solved a long-time problem that bothers clinicians for centuries, which is to determine the etiology of different infectious diseases.

PACEseq detects the cell-free microbial nucleic acid in the clinical body fluid samples, utilizing its own automatic nucleic acid purification system and library preparation system to avoid aerosol contamination and variation caused by different lab personnel. Not just the ‘wet lab’ mNGS technology, the novelty and the core advantage of PACEseq also lay on its artificial intelligence (AI) platform trained by microbial database, quality control data, sequencing and clinical big data, carrying out ultra-high dimensional eigenvalue analysis and a filtering model for accurate diagnosis. Combined together the ‘wet lab’ and the ‘dry lab’ of PACEseq, more than 50% of previously unknown etiology of patients with phenotypic heterogeneity could now be identified. Hence, anti-infective regimes could be selected accurately and accordingly to better treat the patient and reduce unreasonable use of antibiotics. 

Since its roll-out, PACEseq has achieved a significant competitive advantage of more than 85% accordance rate in testing pathogenic microorganisms of infection. Currently, it has served more than 1000 clinical hospitals and 2,000 clinical departments and tested more than 100,000 clinical samples across 150 central cities in 31 provinces of China. 

Hugobiotech invested enormous financial and labor efforts on R&D including the improvement of current PACEseq platform and the development of new diagnostic products and bioinformatic pipelines. The results of PACEseq analysis from the study on the etiological classification and diagnosis of meningitis based on omics characteristics concluded successfully in the national key research development project as part of China’s ‘13th Five-Year Plan’. Hugobiotech’s innovative combination of biotechnology and AI was also granted the ‘Beijing National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Development Pilot Zone - Open Laboratory for Intelligent Sequencing Scenes’ by the city of Beijing.

Hugobiotech has been held in the good graces of the top biotech venture capitals, which helps Hugobiotech to implement its core product commercialization strategy and technological upgrades with sufficient capital support. Hugobiotech has received nearly 600 million CNY of investment from top venture capitals, due to its deep layout in the NGS industry, as well as IVD qualification and artificial intelligence resources, which will further promote Hugobiotech to achieve its mission: ‘Digitalize Pathogen Diagnosis, In China For Global’. 

Meanwhile, as a leading player in the clinical microbial testing of the healthcare industry,  the power of the world-class technology of Hugobiotech was put at the frontline during the pandemic of COVID-19. Hugobiotech will continue to carry its social responsibility and  contribute to the public health.

With enduring development of technologies, magnificent innovative achievements, the recognition by enormous number of clinicians and investors, and tremendous growth of the company, Hugobiotech and PACEseq was honored the Biotechnology Award at the China Technology Excellence Awards 2021.

"Hugobiotech will continue to create unique technological initiatives to make microbial testing easier even in these challenging times. This is not only to push the technology boundaries in China but also to build something useful for the One Health of the whole world. We will not stop working with medical experts and consulting services across 4000 tertiary hospitals in the country to create a network where information and technology are shared for the betterment of the society," said Han Xia, Ph.D., CEO of Hugobiotech.

Watch the interview below to know more about their winning project: