Li-Ming Gan on successful research and his life's work with knowledge from industry, academia, and the public sector.

Ribocure Pharmaceuticals is a biotech company focusing on oligonucleotide therapeutics to offer the best possible medicine for the individual patient. Ribocure unites biotech innovation with the established systematic work processes of Big Pharma as well as preclinical discovery work with innovative clinical trials, all on the same office floor. This is what Li-Ming refers to as completing the circle.

- It is the ultimate union of everything I have done and worked on up until this day. We combine bench research with clinical research, we unite academic innovation with industry, and the meeting between east and west. Even my first work with mentoring PhD students as many of them now have been hired to join the Ribocure team, says Li-Ming.

At Ribocure they drive global project development of their oligonucleotide assets, as well as design and execute innovative clinical studies in their own Phase II clinical trial unit. They strive to perform all the work by using biotech agility combined with an efficient cross-functional teamwork model like those established within Big Pharma.

- To be able to demonstrate proof of principle/concept in target population is the ultimate goal of innovative drug discovery process. To be able to control this step using high volume and high-quality unit such as our own Phase II unit, is indeed very unique in the industry, explains Li-Ming.

This is a massive contribution to the government’s life science strategy to increase the number of clinical trials in Sweden. Li-Ming explains that it has previously not been easy to execute clinical trials in Sweden due to numerous hurdles, comparing to other larger countries, e.g., USA. However, Li-Ming has always had a lot of belief in Sweden and Swedish clinical research capacity and has planned to allocate many oligonucleotide-based clinical trials to Sweden.

- We would like Swedish principal investigators and researchers to be the first to prove a concept in the patient. That’s how we can put Sweden on the world map in terms of innovative drug research, comments Li-Ming.

Just now in September 2023 Ribocure achieved first-patient-in in Sweden of their Phase II clinical trial, evaluating efficacy and safety of a novel siRNA molecule targeting Hepatitis B virus. And next year they will execute five more clinical trials in Sweden using their proprietary siRNA platform, now targeting e.g., lipid disorders, thrombosis, renal disease, as well as rare cancer diseases.

Despite that the requirements are high for conducting trials in Sweden, Li-Ming with his strong belief in Sweden has succeeded to convince Ribocure’s parent company to follow this Swedish route in early clinical development before global registrational trials. Sweden is top ranked in the world in terms of innovation with many talented scientists and distinguished clinical researchers. He further explains that he believes in Sweden’s approach of letting people choose their own career paths as you can only become extremely talented when driven by interest and passion.

- I believe we can create an attractive clinical research network for all the interested principal investigators in Sweden that otherwise do not always get the opportunity to use their knowledge for these types of proof of principle/concept trials, says Li-Ming.

Li-Ming has been involved in many different types of drug discovery platforms and modalities within life science but expresses that the speed and precision of this technical platform made him want to focus on oligonucleotide therapeutics at Ribocure.

- With many other drug platforms, it is still a lot of trial and error. Using our siRNA platform, we can with high success rate precisely "shut down" disease causing genes in the liver, and the chances of us being “off target” is practically non-existent. Using this liver delivery platform, we can treat most of the lipid disorders, fatty liver diseases and their complications, as well as hypertension and thrombotic diseases explains Li-Ming. There is a lot of excitement and breakthroughs in our "innovation factory", we will soon also launch similar oligonucleotide platforms targeting against kidneys as well as a specific type of brain tumor, continues Li-Ming.

The precision and efficiency of the discovery machinery Li-Ming and his team are creating together with their lead time from an idea to first-time-in-man of 24 months is what makes Ribocure so special. Even though 24 months is very short, they have a goal of reducing it to 18 months which is revolutionary as it usually takes far much longer when working with other modalities.

Ribocure established at GoCo Health Innovation City in June 2023, to focus even more on cross-border collaboration. Li-Ming sees himself as an embodiment of collaboration between academia, public sector, and industry.

- It is a given that we need to collaborate. There is no “us and them”, we are all here for science and for the patient. Naturally success and money play a part in the equation as in most industries, however that is just a consequence or an upside for us passionate researchers. More importantly is the meaning of life, which is what motivates us in our work, says Li-Ming.

Further, Li-Ming describes the need of being in a cluster context. When working within life science you need to be able to collaborate with other companies that can offer services, assistance, and contacts that you need.

- Being in the cluster at GoCo, helps us meet these people and when the time comes, we know where to turn for insight and support, explains Li-Ming.

He also expresses the importance of life science companies marketing themselves. It is important for these companies to market and promote their work so all relevant collaboration partners can find them and work with them, no matter where in the world they are located.

At GoCo Health Innovation City we have all these important components to create collaboration within life science. However, the most important aspects of GoCo, according to Li-Ming, is the closeness between research, entrepreneurship, and patients.

- When you allow people to randomly interact with each other, that is when innovation happens. You cannot book a meeting for innovation. And those spontaneous interactions are what you have created the possibility for here at GoCo, comments Li-Ming.

Li-Ming expresses the importance and benefit of GoCo, where people from Big Pharma, biotech, academia, hospital, and other sectors can meet and exchange experiences. This also creates many new job opportunities, and for some of the people this will provide them with a fantastic life-changing new start in their career life.

- We are very happy and fortunate with our recruitment in Ribocure with a perfect and unique mixture of Big Pharma veterans, health care professionals and talented experienced scientists. Most important, we are all passionate about our journey and having so much fun working together toward our goal to be the leading clinical oligonucleotide research company in Sweden, concludes Li-Ming.

Lastly, Li-Ming chooses to characterize GoCo Health Innovation City with these three words: Innovative, Patient Centered and Vibrant.