At present, in clinical medical practice, two types of anesthesia are mainly used: analgesics and local anesthetics (hereinafter referred to as local anesthetics).  The former reduces the patient’s stress response and improves comfort, however, many drugs are used in the anesthesia process, the cost is high, the operation process is complicated, postoperative complications may occur and the risk is higher; In terms of the latter, it is simple and easy to perform, the patient can stay awake, it has little physiological interference and is relatively cheap, but the disadvantage is that the action time is short and the application is limited.

The "ultra-long-acting local anesthetic" developed by Professor Liu Jin's team at West China Hospital is an innovative improvement to the shortcomings of local anesthetics. "Ultra-long-acting local anesthetics" will work through local anesthesia, and the duration of anesthesia can reach more than 50 hours, which is 2 to 5 times the action time of existing anesthetics.  Generally speaking, a new drug creation cycle takes nearly 10 years.  In the entire drug development process, hospitals and enterprises need to participate in the whole process, and evaluate and invest in stages.  Since drug development failures may occur in any link, the development process is extremely cautious.  Take "ultra-long-acting local anesthetics" as an example, the results are expected to enter the clinical research stage in 2 to 3 years, and it can enter clinical applications in about 6 to 7 years from now.

Professor Liu Jin introduced that "ultra-long-acting local anesthetics" are anesthesia and postoperative multi-modal analgesia based on local infiltration anesthesia and precise nerve block guided by ultrasound to reduce and avoid repeated use of anesthetics and analgesia throughout the body medicine and its systemic side effects. He also said that in the future, West China Hospital will continue to carry out clinical research cooperation after the new drug is launched, and expand the indications through further tracking of the first-line clinical research.  With its excellent performance, the "ultra-long-acting local anesthetic" has attracted the attention of a large number of domestic companies and has been scrambling to seek cooperation.  In the end, West China Hospital and Yichang Renfu reached a cooperation agreement. Among them, the patent license fee alone reached 50 million CNY, and the project cooperation development contract reached 200 million CNY, with a total amount of 250 million CNY, which became the highest single patent transfer fee signed by West China Hospital.

From People.cn

September 10th, 2020