Deals and Financings

Crown Bioscience closed a $26.6 million Series D funding round led by Lilly Asia Ventures Fund II (see story). CrownBio is a preclinical CRO, specializing in oncology and metabolic disorders, headquartered in California with labs in Beijing, Taicang, the UK and North Carolina. CrownBio said it would use the money to expand its platform technologies and make acquisitions.

GCA Therapeutics will pay Neurotez up to $102.5 million in sales milestone to in-license China rights for derivatives of the hormone leptin as a treatment for Alzheimer’s (see story). Both companies are headquartered in the US, though GCAT’s business operations are in mainland China. GCAT will be responsible for clinical development of the product and will pay royalties on sales in addition to the milestones.

Life Spine, a US medical device company that makes spinal fixation products, will use China Pioneer Pharma (HK: 1345) of Shanghai as its China marketing partner (see story). China Pioneer Pharma distributes imported pharmaceutical products and medical devices to more than 23,000 hospitals in China. Prior to its relationship with Life Spine, Pioneer’s portfolio did not include spinal products.

Agenix (ASX: AGX), an Australian biopharma with a drug development subsidiary in Shanghai, sold its pre-clinical treatment for hepatitis B to Cinkate Pharma for $2 million (see story). The drug candidate, AGX-1009, is a prodrug of tenofovir, a nucleotide analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitor. Cinkate is a US company that is focused on drug development in China and markets Airohua® (lefluonomide) for autoimmune indications.

Inovio Pharma (NYSE: INO) of the US acquired ex-China rights to potential therapies for Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis based on the academic research of Dr. Bin Wang, a professor at Fudan University's Shanghai Medical College (see story). The innovative technology generates inducible regulatory T cells (iTreg), which shut down immune responses after an invading organism has been eliminated. Inovio will make clinical and regulatory milestone payments to Fudan University.

AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) signed a cardiovascular research collaboration with Tianjin Medical University, which will explore novel targets to treat cardiac fibrosis (see story). Cardiac fibrosis reduces cardiac function and can lead to heart failure. Specifically, TMU researchers will investigate soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors (sEHI) as a therapy for cardiac fibrosis. More generally, AstraZeneca and TMU will seek to identify the cause(s) of cardiac fibrosis, a poorly understood disease.

WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE: WX) formed a clinical biomarker partnership with Targos GmbH, a German company that specializes in biomarker services (see story). The partnership will focus on validation of biomarkers in cancer. Targos will provide know-how, services and standards to support WuXi's bioanalytical work for its CRO clients.

Company News

Johnson & Johnson’s (NYSE: JNJ) medical device division will emphasize China, Russia and other emerging countries as a strategy to increase growth (see story). J&J is already the largest healthcare company in China. Its medical device revenues were up 18% in China during 2013 to $1.4 billion. But global medical device sales were flat in Q1 of 2014, which prompted the company to review its plans for growth of the division.

Government and Regulatory

China will limit IPOs to just 100 for the remainder of 2014, even though more than 550 companies have filed to raise capital on China’s public exchanges (see story). After 2013, when all IPOs were halted, observers expected a flood of new offerings this year. But regulators seem to fear anything that might destabilize the market. China’s stock prices have been heading lower since 2010. Apparently, regulators are worried that investors would sell their existing holdings to buy new shares, sending prices lower still.

Disclosure: none.