In order to investigate the public awareness about type 2 diabetes as well as gathering more data to help us to decide our product positioning in the business plan. We designed an online questionnaire and spread it online. Finally we have received 368 valid samples.

Our first question is about the gender of the respondent. As can be seen from the figure below, 46.85% are men, 48.49% are women, and 4.66% are unwilling to reveal their genders. This result shows that we have kept the balance between different genders so that we can make sure the answers to the other questions are with both objectivity and universality.

This question is to investigate public knowledge regarding diabetes. There are 63.84% of the total respondents who claimed they know about diabetes in some sorts and 14.25% think they know it well. This data is not only reveals the recent situation of public awareness of doiabetes but also indirectly proves that the diabetes actually are quite common cases in China.

The second question is if you or someone close to you has diabetes?' According to the table below, we can see that 58.63% of the total respondents and their surroundings have diabetes, while the rest and their surroundings do not have diabetes. This survey follows the principle of simple random sampling, so the results are universal to a great degree. And then, according to the results above, it' s reasonable for us to indicate that drugs to treat diabetes are in great potential demand.

In the third question among those respondents who were suffering or suffered from diabetes, 42.78% of them had taken medication related to diabetes, but still ?? of them chose to not take any relevant medication. As we know, nowadays the treatment of diabetes especially type 2 diabetes mainly relies on medication. Therefore, it indicates that still some people haven't paid enough attention to diabetes or lacked relevant knowledge resulting in not taking timely treatment. In this regard, we decided to focus more on public education about diabetes.

We also looked forward to hearing the public opinions on the current diabetes drugs. Per the chart shown below, the majority (38.61%) thought it effective but it cannot be ignored that there are still 20.56% of the respondents disagreed. Therefore, we can conclude that current diabetes drugs haven't yet achieved high satisfaction and there exists a demand for new drugs or solutions, which means our project is responsible for the social need.

According to the survey result below, we further learned that nearly 30% of respondents who took diabetes drugs claimed that the drugs had significant damage to the body after taking them. However, about 67% of people feel fine after taking those drugs. This shows that overall the current products have been carefully assessed regarding side effects before going to the market and the relevant technology is also quite mature already, but it still needs to be improved. It also reminds us of paying attention to assess the side effect of the new drugs during the development stages.

We also surveyed how much diabetics paid for the drugs per time. Surprisingly, the respondents who thought it was not that high is more than those who said it was quite high. As shown in the chart below, we can clearly see that 34% of all the diabetics surveyed paid 50-100 CNY to buy drugs per time. This number would be served as a reference for our pricing in our business plan and we can adjust the price of our final new drug so as to compete with current drugs especially in the early stage we step into the market.

Besides the online questionnaire, we also specially conducted street interviews for communicating with the public directly, especially the elderly, who might not use smartphones a lot so yet to take our online questionnaire.

We divided ourselves into three groups in Nanjing's Golden Eagle International Shopping Center and Wanda Mao Square to conduct offline interviews. In addition, we also divided the interviewees into five categories, including those who had no idea about diabetes, those who did not suffer diabetes but knew how to prevent diabetes, and those whose friends or relatives suffering from diabetes but didn't know diabetes symptoms nor how to prevent it, those whose friends or relatives suffering from diabetes and know how to prevent diabetes, and those diabetics. Overall, the number of people who suffered from diabetes accounted for about 9% of the total interviewees in addition to 29% of interviewees whose family members or relatives, or friends suffer from diabetes.

basically, the result of our offline interviews is consistent with the result of our online questionnaire. Especially for those elderly people, we found that usually, they will get tests for their blood sugar every year but they don't pay much attention to it or take any measures to prevent it. But through our conversation with them, most of them had insufficient exercise and an irregular diet which might result in red light for getting diabetes.

Most interviewees were middle-aged and elderly people, among which the male was more willing to be interviewed, partly because of their outgoing personality. To be sure whether different genders would affect the result, we also indirectly asabout ked the attitudes and understanding of diabetes of women through their husbands. The results showed that the attitudes and understanding level of diabetes might be consistent inner a Chinese family, which meant the gender factor merely had little influence.

75% of diabetics (and their families) expressed their willingness to try the new drug, but price and efficacy might be their primary considerations (because most patients believed that the drugs currently on the market were cheap enough and could be covered by medical care). The remaining 25% of patients thought that dietary therapy and more exercise were enough because of their mild symptoms or because they thought that taking medicine was easy to produce dependence. Some people thought that insulin injections and oral drugs could now meet the needs of treatment and would not have much impact on life, so they were reluctant to try the new drug with a longer course of treatment and a higher price. Totally, the new drug (GKA) would have a good potential market, as soon as it could meet our expectation of cost performance.

So based on the interview data, we made a radar map and found that our products may be mainly for middle-aged and elderly men who can pay for drugs and have time for long-term treatment. But we could not eliminate the drug demand for middle-aged females since actually the influence of gender on purchase intention or willingness is not significant according to the radar.
Another conclusion we could reach from our street interviews is that most patients did not understand the difference between GK activators and insulin so they had trouble understanding our project design. Therefore it will be necessary for us to explain to the public about GK and its mechanism in blood sugar regulation more clearly so as to help the public understand our project.

The above table shows all the data we collected in our street interviews. During this campaign, we also investigated the name of the drugs they were currently taking, the side effects of the drugs, and whether they will try our new drug.

1. almost current drugs in the market have certain side effects and patients cannot be completely free from the pain of side effects after taking them.
2*. The majority of patients are willing to try our drugs, which indicates the great potential market for our drugs.

Since Doctor Xing has rich knowledge and clinical experience regarding diabetes and its treatment. He shared much valuable information with us.
He told us that we can use symptoms, body weight, and age (generally over 40 years old) to identify whether we are suffering from diabetes, but not through technical means. Many people don't fully understand what mechanism makes the patient unable to cure after suffering from diabetes. We need to understand the patient's condition through follow-up and comprehensive consideration.
Doctor Xing also added that the treatment of type-2 diabetes requires a long-term process of comprehensive management because it is not a simple blood sugar problem that usually companies with other diseases which cause many troubles to the patients.
He also shared us with some special report data that there is a certain relationship between the incidence rate of diabetes and ethnic groups (according to Chinese statistics, the prevalence of Han and Manchu is high, and that of Tibetans is low). The incidence of incidence rate in developed areas is higher than that in backward areas, and that in cities is higher than that in rural areas.
Regards to current treatment, he emphasized that diabetes can not be treated only with traditional Chinese medicine since in the Traditional Chinese Medicine area this actually is not identified as a disease. Thus traditional Chinese medicine only plays an auxiliary role in conditioning and mainly uses western medicine as a therapy.
Through this conversation with doctor Xing, we had a deeper understanding about diabetes and current solutions and these valuable information will be also delivered to the general public by our education campaigns.

Mr. Ye believes that there is a tremendous possibility that our drugs will be marketed. At present, there are no such drugs on the market but many insulin drug formulations. Speaking objectively, each dosage form has its advantages and disadvantages. There is no saying which dosage form has better efficacy, the effect needs to be determined according to the characteristics of the drug. Moreover, the use habits and use time of patients will also have an impact.
Mr. Ye also provided us with his insights about the competitivity analysis of our new drug. In terms of the advantages of oral medicine, it is convenient for patients to take, and carry. However, the disadvantages are also very obvious. For example, the degree and duration of taking effect are not optimal. There are also both advantages and disadvantages of injection drugs. The most significant feature of injection drugs is very quick to take effect but the most important disadvantage of it is not that easy to operate.
We sought his insights for the pricing of our product in the business plan. Therefore, he helped us with the cost analysis. Drugs targeting GK are one kind of type-I drug. Type-I drugs refer to those that are not listed in the world. The main cost will be in the early stage of research and development. It may usually take 5-6 years to find the target and may take 3-6 years for preclinical research. It may take about 5-8 years for clinical phase I, II, and III, and then it could be listed. While the cost in the later stage is relatively small. Because the initial investment is very high, the selling price is also very high if it requires a quicker turnaround. Even worse, if the patent protection period of this drug expires, a large number of pharmaceutical companies will imitate it which will steal our market after all. The manufacturing costs of such generic drugs include variable costs and fixed costs. Fixed cost refers to the input of some plants and hardware. Then the variable cost is the composition of the drug, raw materials, and labor costs. No need to pay the initial cost, the price of these generic drugs will drop a lot.
The State supports class I new drugs and generic drugs. There is a green channel for the review of class I new drugs. For example, the safety of new coronavirus drugs is guaranteed when they are in phase I and phase II clinical trials, and they are listed simultaneously when they are in phase III clinical trials, that is to say, they are listed in advance. Local governments also have preferential incentive policies. For example, in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, the countries where new drugs are listed have subsidies, with the highest of 10 million yuan. If the generic drugs are first marketed, the local government will give money and the state will also give subsidies. Therefore, the state actually strongly encourages it.
In his opinion, the possibility of diabetes entering medical insurance is great: diabetes patients require drugs often which have strong substitutability and are relatively safe. Usually, the state will give priority to ensuring that the treatment drugs for serious diseases are included in the medical insurance and most diabetes drugs have entered the medical insurance. If the drug we developed is especially good, it may enter medical insurance. Of course, there are many considerations for drugs to enter medical insurance. The situation is different in different places and the medical insurance policies are different. For example, drug A may enter the medical insurance in Shanghai, but if it is in a remote place, it may not enter the medical insurance due to limited funds.
Mr. Ye advised that the selling point of our products should be to ensure better safety, and stability and reduce side effects. China now has a drug-holder system which means that If this compound is found, there are some professional organizations that could be involved in assisting in drug development. However, the first holder is the final holder of intellectual property rights. In our case, if we register the patent firstly means the patent belongs to us, no matter how many manufacturers we decide to grant it to. This is no problem. The specific profit sharing depends on our negotiation with our partners. This model is quite popular at present. There are also many such assistance institutions in China and many ways of cooperation. This really inspired us a lot and later on, we modified our business plan with the help of Mr. Ye's insights and advice.

In order to have more professional insights regarding drug development, we managed to contact Mr. Xie who is working on the relevant research.
Mr. Xie specially prepared a presentation for us to in detailed introduce the research progress of type-2 diabetes and the discovery of therapeutic drugs. After the discussion on this advancing research, we also conducted an interview around the drug development, including the discovery of diabetes and the main role of insulin, classification of diabetes and main therapeutic drugs for T2D, the introduction of the discovery process of drugs (e.g. SGLT2 inhibitor), research, and potential application of targeted GK drug discovery.
Mr. Xie's explanation greatly broadened our horizons, especially in the field of the history of diabetes, which inspired us to draw lessons from relevant achievements in history. Through the study of the historical process, we understood that we should carry forward the past and forge ahead, and keep pace with the times, developing more effective drugs for diabetes. Again we felt the responsibility we need to carry and contribute to medical care.