Deals and Financings

Luye Pharma (HK: 2186) of Yantai will purchase the 42% of Beijing Jialin Pharma it does not already own for $390 million (see story). In August, Luye announced it would pay $599 million to acquire an initial 58% stake in Beijing Jialin, a company focused on cardiovascular and cancer drugs. During 2013, Beijing Jialin reported $180 million of revenue and net profit of $41 million. The total purchase price of $989 million is 24 times Jialin's 2013 profit. 

FortuneRock of Beijing completed a $24 million funding that it will use to advance its portfolio of novel protein drugs (see story). Of the total, $20 million is earmarked for drug development and building a GMP manufacturing facility in Tianjin, which will be spun off into a separate company. The remaining $4 million will underwrite general corporate purposes, including a planned IPO. FortuneRock uses its technology platform to develop novel patent-protected, gene-based recombinant protein drugs. 

Betta Pharmaceuticals of China announced a $20 million investment in Xcovery, a virtual drug developer based in Florida (see story). The investment gives Betta an equity stake in Xcovery and China rights to Xcovery's clinical-stage ALK inhibitor. An innovative drug discovery company headquartered in Hangzhou, Betta discovered and gained China approval for Icotinib, a non-small cell lung cancer targeted treatment. The Xcovery deal is Betta's first investment in a US company. 

WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE: WX), the China CRO with operations in China and the US, will branch out geographically by opening a representative office in Tel Aviv (see story). In addition, WuXi will collaborate with Pontifax, an Israeli venture capital firm specializing in life science, to invest in Israeli companies with promising technologies, especially those that could add to WuXi's CRO services. 

Janssen Pharma, the pharmaceutical division of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), signed a MOU to collaborate on translational research with Shanghai Ruijin Hospital (see story). The hospital opened a Translational Medicine Center in early October. William Hait, global head, R&D at Janssen, told the China Daily that Janssen will provide diagnostic devices and train staff at the hospital. He also said Janssen is looking at several possible acquisitions of innovative China biomedical companies. 

BioChain, a diagnostics company with operations in San Francisco and China, has become the exclusive China distributor of Clinical Genomics' colorectal cancer screening technology (see story). Clinical Genomics of Australia has marketed Insure FIT®, a fecal immunochemical test, around the globe since 1994. BioChain, which will run a China trial of the test to qualify for CFDA approval, will attempt to make the test part of China's recently announced Cancer Screening Feasibility Study.

The GPCR Consortium, a new not-for-profit effort, will seek to characterize the structure of 200 G-protein coupled receptors (see story). Although GPCRs often serve as drug targets, they remain poorly understood, especially in terms of their structure. The Consortium, spearheaded by Dr. Raymond Stevens, a structural biologist and serial entrepreneur, includes two China institutions -- the iHuman Institute at ShanghaiTech University and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica -- along with the University of Southern California, Amgen, Sanofi and Ono. All of the Consortium's findings will be placed in the public domain. 

Company News

Irvine Pharmaceutical Services, a California company offering cGMP contract development and parenteral manufacturing services, announced plans to open a new facility in Hangzhou, China (see story). This newly built, state-of-the-art facility will encompass 115,000 square feet of floor space, and bring Irvine's service offerings into Asian markets. The company expects the plant to be fully operational in early 2015.

Amerigen Pharmaceuticals, a US-China company, has launched generic mecobalamin 0.5 mg tablets in China, the company's first product to enter the China marketplace (see story). The company's China subsidiary, Suzhou Amerigen, will manufacture mecobalamin, which will be distributed by Sinochem Jiangsu Pharma under the Suzhou Amerigen label. Amerigen is developing a portfolio of oral generic products, focusing on difficult-to-produce drugs, for the US and China markets. It expects to expand its China distribution partnership with Sinochem Jiangsu. 

Disclosure: none