Agilent Technologies holds summit on battle against COVID-19

Agilent Technologies on Tuesday held the "2020 Agilent Technology Day & Innovation Summit" in Beijing. The summit was themed, "Fighting COVID-19 with Technology & Innovating for a Healthy China."

Mike McMullen, the company's president and CEO, hosted discussions with a number of key opinion leaders in the fields of science and technology to aid in the fight against COVID-19 and promote the "Healthy China 2030" initiatives. Darlene Solomon PhD, senior vice-president and CTO of Agilent, also delivered a keynote speech, "Agilent Innovates to Improve the Human Condition." The summit was held online and attracted scientific and technical personnel from regions and institutions across China.

As a global leader in the life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets, Agilent explored core technologies with Chinese scientists to overcome COVID-19 from the perspective of scientific and technological innovation.

This involved a variety of key market segments and solutions, such as research, pharmaceuticals, diagnosis and clinical applications. Agilent is working with scientific and medical research teams all over the world to provide technical support to help further understanding of the mechanisms of COVID-19, as well as accelerate detection of the virus and the development of vaccines and related pharmaceutical research, the company said.

When COVID-19 was spreading in China, Agilent took the lead in donating cell analysis equipment worth 3 million yuan to assist frontline scientists with the acquisition of crucial tools for scientific research.

The company's executives said it will deepen cooperation with domestic colleges and universities, and strengthen its support for education and training. This support, with focus on basic disciplines such as biology and chemistry, will promote the development of foundational scientific research in China.

It also will actively deploy strategies and investments and implement in-depth collaboration with China in the field of scientific research in biomedicine, environment and health to help contribute to the development of key areas of the country.

"We are delighted to see China's successful prevention and control of COVID-19 and believe that humankind will defeat this virus as soon as possible through global efforts," McMullen said.

"Technological innovation is bound to be the key to victory, and Agilent will provide comprehensive support in China. Global efforts to combat COVID-19 have raised the bar on human health, bringing new challenges and opportunities to the international life sciences field, and requiring us to integrate and innovate in multiple scientific fields simultaneously. China has always been one of the most important markets for Agilent, and promoting technological innovation and One Health in China is a long-term priority for us."

Tan Weijie, director-general of the Viral Disease Emergency Technology Center of the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who led the completion of the world's first novel coronavirus isolation and genome sequencing identification, said accelerating technology innovation is of great strategic significance to China. He added that while the country has made a lot of achievements in the field of COVID-19 research, it is more necessary to strengthen technology innovation to provide adequate technical support for improving public health emergency mechanisms and dealing with the new normal of fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic.