Zhang Yang

    nicolezyyy@163.com

    A JAPANESE team presenting a groundbreaking therapy for leucoderma won the top prize of the 1st China (Shenzhen) Innovation & Entrepreneurship International Competition that wrapped up in Longgang District on Friday.

    The competition was a parallel event of the 15th Conference on International Exchange of Professionals (CIEP) that ended yesterday.

    The final contest in Longgang consisted of three rounds — a five-minute presentation, a Q&A section and a three-minute fundraising speech. After five hours of fierce competition, the Japanese team scored the highest among 15 finalists.

    The team’s spokesperson Li Shaowei, an assistant professor at Osaka University in Japan, said the core concept of the therapy is amplifying a small piece of healthy skin from the patient and grafting it to the patient’s leucoderma-affected skin area. “Our therapy is the newest and most effective way to cure leucoderma,” he said.

    According to Li, compared with traditional drug therapies or surgeries for leucoderma, their therapy can help patients recover a larger area of healthy skin within a month, without repeated treatments or side effects.

    “We want to cooperate with hospitals in Shenzhen to popularize our therapy,” Li said, adding that they were also looking for investment and government support to set up GMP labs and get approvals from the provincial health and family planning commission to license the therapy.

    Li said the cost for each patient to receive the treatment would be 30,000 yuan (US$4,411). “The commercial value of the therapy is huge because there are 1.3 million leucoderma patients in China,” he said, adding that the therapy could also be applied to treat burn wounds, freckles or to erase tattoos.

    A total of 1,210 contestants participated in the competition’s regional contests, which were held in eight countries around the world, and 76 teams made it into the semifinals, which were held in Shenzhen on Thursday.

    The competition offered a total of 9.12 million yuan to the final winners at an awards ceremony during the 15th CIEP. Li’s team was awarded 1 million yuan, while three second-prize winners were offered 500,000 yuan each and six third-prize winners were given 300,000 yuan each.

    (Special reports on CIEP on P2, 3)