Deals and Financings
• Eddingpharm of Hong Kong agreed to pay $375 million for China rights to two off-patent antibiotics from Lilly and the Suzhou factory that makes them;
• Tencent Trusted Doctors, a China on-line/off-line provider of medical services, raised $250 million in a round led by Tencent Holdings;
• WuXi AppTec will pay $46.4 million to acquire a 15% outstanding stake in STA Pharma, its small molecule manufacturing division;
• Sirnaomics, a US-China company developing RNAi therapeutics against cancer and fibrotic diseases, completed a $47 million C round from China investors;
• MicroPort of Shanghai co-led a $20 million Series C financing in Israel's Rapid Medical and will develop Rapid Medical's stroke treatment in China;
• Adagene, a Suzhou-San Francisco antibody company, entered an antibody drug conjugate discovery collaboration with Switzerland's ADC Therapeutics;
Government and Regulatory
• China has negotiated a shorter patent protection period for US biologic drugs, down to eight years from 12 years in the US, according to sources;
Company News
• Suzhou's Gracell Bio announced a new technology that reduces the manufacturing time of CAR-T treatments from two weeks to one day with lower cost and higher potency;
Trials and Approvals
• Innovent Biologics (Suzhou) dosed the first patient in a China Phase I trial of a bispecific antibody that targets both PD-1 and PD-L1;
• TaiGen Biotech started a China Phase III trial of a combination treatment for hepatitis C pairing its direct-acting antiviral with one from YiChang HEC ChangJiang;
• Hua Medicine of Shanghai began a US Phase I trial of its lead drug, dorzagliatin, a first-in-class oral glucokinase activator in patients with type 2 diabetes;
• Beijing's Sinovac Biotech reported its Sabin strain inactivated polio vaccine proved non-inferiority in China Phase III trials.
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