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October 4, 2010 -- Redwood City, California -- BioCentury Publications, Inc., the leading lobal provider of biotech news and analysis, today welcomes to the San Francisco Bay Area the CEOs of the top three life science companies in the Greater China SEED Business Plan Competition held in Shanghai. The three innovator company CEOs received the "BioCentury SEED Winners Tour" award and will be BioCentury's guests for the event which starts today and runs through October 7.

Recipients of the "BioCentury SEED Winners Tour" award are first place SEED competition winner Dr. Yuqiang Wang, Chairman and CEO of Magpie Pharmaceuticals; and the two runners up, Dr. Bai Xu, President and CEO of Nanomed Devices Inc. (Suzhou Natong Bionanotechnology Co. Ltd.), and Dr. Josen Ma, Founder and President of Pharminova Bio-tech Co. Ltd.

The SEED (Scientists to Entrepreneurs, Education and Development) competition was organized by Roche, OrbiMed and McKinsey & Company, and hosted in April by ChinaBio Accelerator. The first place prize, RMB 300,000 ($44,000) was sponsored by Roche. BioCentury participated as an Official Partner of the event and served on the judging committee.

The "BioCentury SEED Winners Tour" allows the award winners to engage directly with seasoned Bay Area life science venture capitalists and biotech CEOs, and to see how cutting-edge entrepreneurial programs at Stanford University and the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) are focused on translating biomedical innovation into pragmatic applications with commercial value.

Participants in the "Winners Tour" also include Genentech Inc., which will provide a roundtable discussion of Roche's strategy in China and the Genentech licensing process; Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences; Northwestern University's INVO (Innovation and New Ventures Office); ChinaBio LLC, which hosted the Greater China SEED Plan Competition; and the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

"The BioCentury SEED Winners Tour takes our commitment to the growth and success of biotechnology throughout the world to a new level," said David Flores, BioCentury's President & CEO. "Through the SEED tour, we are providing a valuable experience for these innovator company CEOs, enabling them to take back to China important new insights and contacts to share with other bioscience entrepreneurs and, importantly, to the players involved in the development of Chinese biotech."

Magpie Pharmaceuticals has built a unique drug discovery platform that creates new drug candidates by chemically modifying the structures of clinically-proven Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCM. It is developing a compound targeting Parkinson's disease and stroke and another targeting diabetes. Nanomed is developing microarray devices for painless intradermal drug delivery, with plans to launch acne and topical anesthetic products, and also is developing a product for basal delivery of insulin for diabetics. PharmInova is developing natural silk fibroin-based biomaterials for use in tissue regeneration, repair materials and tissue scaffolding. Its first product, a bioactive tissue regeneration membrane for use in orthopedics, is undergoing regulatory review in China.

Now in its 18th year, BioCentury Publications, Inc. is internationally recognized as an essential provider of independent business intelligence and analysis for biopharma executives, scientists, regulators and investors. Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., and with offices in Chicago; Chadds Ford, Pa; Washington D.C. and the U.K., BioCentury's information platform includes business and translational science journals, conferences and online databases encompassing corporate strategy, partnering, emerging technology, product development, regulation, public policy and the financing markets.

BioCentury also produces "BioCentury This Week," the first biotech public affairs program to be broadcast in major U.S. markets. The program, a partnership with the Gannett Broadcasting flagship W*USA in Washington, D.C., is broadcast every Sunday morning, 8:30-9:00 a.m.,on WUSA Channel 9, the CBS affiliate in Washington, and in the Boston, Mass., market on Fox affiliate WFXT Channel 25. Programs are webcast at www.biocenturytv.com. For more information about BioCentury: www.biocentury.com