BioCentury This Week

Ep. 330 - China's Innovation Moment

• BioCentury • Season 6 • Episode 330

Share episode

China is setting a new bar for the speed of clinical development and redefining the time it takes an asset to get to the clinic. On a special edition of the BioCentury This Week podcast recorded on stage at the 12th BioCentury BayHelix China Healthcare Summit in Shanghai, BioCentury's Simone Fishburn argued that China’s emerging new standard for swift entry to the clinic could upend the bottleneck of translational development and usher in a new paradigm that could have a “massive impact globally.”
Fishburn and her BioCentury colleagues Joshua Berlin and Jeff Cranmer were joined by a trio of cross-border KOLs — John Zhu, CEO of antibody-drug conjugate company DualityBio; Matt Hewitt, CTO of  Charles River Laboratories' manufacturing business division; and Bing Wang, CFO of Akeso — to discuss the speed of generating first-in-human data, Innovent’s $1.2 billion deal with Takeda, an evolving biotech talent pool, and the state of the financial markets.
“For me, it really feels like 2025 is the year that biotech globally woke up to China,” Fishburn said.

BioCentury returns to Asia early next year for the 5th East-West Summit, March 9-11 in Seoul. Register today as a delegate or apply to join the Presenting Company Class to take advantage of early bird rates.

#ChinaInnovation #DrugDevelopment #PharmaDeals #GlobalBiotech #PharmaInnovation #siRNA #BrainToVein

00:00 - Introduction
02:49 - China Speed
12:27 - Clinical Trails 
17:34 - Global Strategy
26:59 - Financial Markets IPOs
36:52 - Talent

To submit a question to BioCentury’s editors, email the BioCentury This Week team at podcasts@biocentury.com.

Reach us by sending a text

[AI-generated transcript.]

Jeff Cranmer:

Welcome to a special edition of the BioCentury This Week podcast. Today we are coming to you from one of the most active biotech hubs in the world, Shanghai. On today's podcast, we will deliver the key takeaways from the 12th annual BioCentury BayHelix China Healthcare Summit with our special guests, Matt Hewitt, VP and CTO of Charles Rivers Manufacturing Business Division. We have Bing Wang, CFO of China, biotech kind of high flying China biotech Akeso, and we have. John Zhu of Duality Biologics. He's the CEO of this company that got the current wave of biotech IPOs rolling on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. late last year, I think it was from the BioCentury side. We have the illustrious Simone Fishburn

Simone Fishburn:

illustrious this week. Okay.

Jeff Cranmer:

Our editor in chief, vice President. And notorious Washington Commanders fan, Josh Berlin, who's actually the man behind the curtain of all of our conferences, as you heard, at the beginning of today,

Simone Fishburn:

and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go, I think he is the heart and soul of the China Healthcare Summit. I, it's the heart and soul. Heart and souls.

Josh Berlin:

Tough, tough, uh, bar there. But I'll, I'll get, this is the nice, they called worse.

Simone Fishburn:

This is the nicest we're ever gonna be, Josh. So take it, you know.

Jeff Cranmer:

All right. Well, you may have heard the term China speed. Has anybody heard that term before? Yeah.

Simone Fishburn:

Yeah. China speed.

Jeff Cranmer:

Well, buckle up, few of us just toward, the Zhangjiang Science Park. me for the first time, uh, we're top biopharmas from around the world and around China, have set up shop, and I'm here to tell you that. Clinical trials in China are getting even faster, if you can believe that. So we'll talk the accelerating pace of clinical development. On today's podcast, we'll also talk about Innovent's$1.2 billion deal with Takeda and why the move is a giant step toward global innovation for the Suzhou company. And green shoots in the financing market are coming in the form of capital flowing again here in China in an IPO market, as I just mentioned in Hong Kong, that's kind of leaving NASDAQ in the dust when it comes to IPOs at least. None of this, of course, could happen without talent, and I'm looking around the room here and I see a lot of talent. We'll discuss how China's talent pool is rapidly evolving, and we'll also talk about the direction of biotech innovation. Simone, let's start with accelerating clinical trials. Uh, what have you learned this week? What have you seen?

Simone Fishburn:

Right. So, you know, for context, I wasn't on that tour just to stipulate that. but I heard great things about it, and you're gonna talk about it in a minute, maybe. but, you know, sitting through a really extraordinary couple of days of panels, some take homes that we got, well, I think it's very well known inside China and our message really is to. People in the other ecosystems, the U.S. and Europe, Really understanding what an impact is gonna have globally, the way that clinical trial and clinical trial starts or accelerating in China. China is really setting a new bar for this. we are seeing, you know, one of the most important, perhaps underrecognized in the west, moves. That was by Esobiotec who were in Europe trying to get things done on very little money and realizing that the way to do that for them was to come and run their clinical trial in China. And in a very short amount of time. And what did we talk about with like four patients or fewer even, you know, maybe even fewer than that. They flipped that into a deal with AstraZeneca. And so, you know, my, my feeling really is that China's setting a new bar, we're seeing the U.K. set itself new standards for reverting to what it used to do. And going beyond that in terms of accelerating clinical trials. And we all know that this really is the biggest bottleneck. In drug development is going from discovery into humans. I mean that is, that is the bit that takes forever and where, you know, your failure rates are very high. And so if you can really bend the curve on how long it takes you to get well in speeding up, getting that human clinical data. You can really start to change the paradigm and I, I personally think that that might be where China has a massive impact globally. So those are my thoughts on that. Do you wanna pick it up from there?

Bing Wang:

Sure. Thank you Simone. I think. You nailed it. I think having Jean-Pierre on the stage, um, yesterday was a, a perfect example of the integration of China's innovation in the global stage. Here is a very scrappy entrepreneur, have much lower resources than compared to some of the U.S. California and Boston Biotech.

Simone Fishburn:

C Can I just interrupt, say. Just for the audience, this is Jean-Pierre Latere, the CEO of EsoBiotec, right?

Bing Wang:

Yes. Thank you. Yes, John Pierre Issa Biotech. Um, so, you know, very scrappy, very talented entrepreneur. Really made the much smaller raise. I think he, he did not even break, uh, 20. Million euros in terms of his total raise and he was able to get a lot accomplished with that capital, right? Comparable to some of the bigger, without naming names, some of the bigger U.S. in vivo CAR T companies, and able to create enough data from both translational quality of the vectors as well as some human data to get AstraZeneca, says, we feel pretty de-risk about this platform and actually did very, very well for his product, for his platform, and for his investors, and I think that story. Really nailed it in terms of the last two days of how China is part of the global system today.

Simone Fishburn:

So I actually, I wanna take it a step further and play to my internal crowd here and a couple of compliments within this. I think there are certain times and certain deals, quite often events that some people at the time recognized their importance going forward. Others take longer. You could look at the Legend deal with J&J as a really seminal deal for understanding the value of China innovation. I think what you've just pointed to many people may have have whiffed on that, but that deal that EsoBiotec did and then getting bought, I would say Akeso itself has certainly made a massive splash in terms of making people understand. Wow. I mean, that just changed the whole paradigm. And obviously you've got a lot of followers there, Duality doing similar things, and you know what you've done. Like the IPO recently is like, oh wait, wait, things are actually happening and the, the boldness of doing that. And so I think that there are more stories coming out of China. That we're able to look at globally and say maybe that was the point at which the trajectory took a slightly different term up and up and it's the accumulation of these things. As said, everybody who's coming to the China conference, Josh, you can pick it up for me in a minute, but we've been coming to this China conference for years. We've known it for years, but for me it really feels like 2025 is the year that biotech globally woke up to China. But it's had all these markers all the way along.

Josh Berlin:

Yeah, I, I totally agree with that. Uh, Simone and we had a, a tremendous number of folks out this week in Shanghai. lot of our western friends, both from Europe and the U.S. who had not been out to China, before, hadn't been out frequently. And I think some of it is the deal flow that everybody's reading about, it's almost, um, a deal of the week, kind of news flow. And we obviously saw the, the huge deal, uh, this week that, um, sort of coincided with the, uh, the launch of the event, the Innovent, uh, Takeda deal. that news flow, I think has become almost impossible to ignore. And I think even those who might have, um, sort of discounted, uh, what was happening in China. You know, even a, a year ago, are now, reassessing and trying to understand. What's happening out here, and also whether there might be opportunities for them, much like, EsoBiotec, example, we had quite a few European and Western VCs out this week. Also looking, I think, on behalf of their portfolio companies, they were out here. Also, I think looking for potentially NewCos and other, ways to access innovation, but also thinking about. How, their own portfolio companies in the West might be able to, also accelerate, R&D and accelerate, proof of concept by perhaps, um, leveraging, China.

Jeff Cranmer:

Yeah, we had the managing director of Google Ventures out, I think it was

Simone Fishburn:

Krishna.

Jeff Cranmer:

Yeah, Krishna. I think it was his first time out, if I remember correct. And we're gonna dig into the in event deal in, in just a moment. but I want to go over to Matt. get U.S. back to the speed of the trials. And Matt, he doesn't live in Shanghai, but he's here all the time. Matt, from your perspective, what do you see?

Matthew Hewitt:

Yeah, I mean, I think for us you know, playing in, in a lot of the therapeutic development side, what we see is that. Companies in general, regardless of modality, are, are truly searching for an environment which colloquially we would call it a fast test, fast fail. So it's important to get to clinic as efficiently as possible. And then once you get to clinic, it's important to get that, if we wanna call it value inflection point data, that that tells you whether or not a a, an asset or a program has a, a chance at success, whether it's going to late phase or potentially going to commercial at some point. And over the last, from what I've seen, seven, eight years here in China, I mean, things have really matured and that's been from multiple perspectives, whether it's the IIT design, the kind of relaunch, uh, of the regulatory framework and from NMPA. and, and you know, we have a lot of talent that's been coming back to China and we, I know we'll talk about that soon. But point being is, is that the framework here has been streamlined such that you can move assets through much, uh, very efficiently. And it has woken up, I think, other parts of the world as well as to that this is now, beginning to look like a trendsetter.

Simone Fishburn:

Can I just quickly follow up to ask you to, um, elaborate on something that we discussed earlier, which is, you know, we talked when I did a story a few months ago about how different regulatory agencies across the world are looking at risk differently and how that is actually changing the pace of getting into the clinic. Can you just

Matthew Hewitt:

Yeah. Sure.

Simone Fishburn:

Elaborate on that?

Matthew Hewitt:

Yeah, so in the past we've kind of talked about what's phase appropriate for. companies as they're moving products through development in, into, into clinical, in the U.S. as an example, we typically divide things into early and late phase clinical. Uh, and depending on the modality, it's either phase one or it's phase one or phase two. And it really depends upon when you're going into a potentially pivotal phase. I think what we have kind of re termed that this year is, is it's not really phase appropriate, but it's risk appropriate because that's how the regulators view the world. They don't view the world through data. They view the world through risk. And so the ideas is that the regulators are looking for a path that is most efficient, where you can, uh, provide the highest quality product or therapy to patients at the lowest risk. I think what we've seen here is, is that, there's been a. a very collaborative approach to understanding what the proper, risk is for each phase so that we can move things very efficiently and so we can try to provide patients with cutting edge therapies that they need.

Bing Wang:

I think what was very helpful last few days, you hear from Li Chen at Hua, you heard it from funding from McKinsey, that the government here is very, very responsive and we actually iterate with the industry and how to make things better from both translation. from both an IND process, clinical, all the way to, they even talked about a, a novel way of, of, you know, beyond the NRDL, how to actually get this to patients to just additional way of paying. So I think the government here is very, very responsive to the needs of the industry.

Jeff Cranmer:

Hmm. And, and thanks. Thanks Bing I, I wanna get the names out there. So our listeners who aren't with us here in the room, and, and Matt appreciated the points there. I wanna bring John into the conversation now. So for those who of you who might not be familiar with Duality, uh, you might be living under a rock. I was gonna say that, that

Simone Fishburn:

three people out there who have been spent the last two years in the desert, maybe

Jeff Cranmer:

someone, uh, yeah. Someone out there may not have heard, but for those of you, uh, as I mentioned, the IPO, one of the top dealmaking China biotechs, I think four deals all for ADCs. so you're in the clinic, from where you sit, what are you seeing evolve with clinical trials?

John Zhu:

Yeah. First of all, we went IPO, uh, April this year, so Oh, was April. April, 15th to be exact. Wow. And, um, I still remember when we go to Hong Kong for the road show, which is April 7th, that's exactly the, uh, trade war happens. And Hong Kong Hang Seng Index was down like 15% in one day. And, uh. was think I were crazy because we want to do the, I remember everyone

Simone Fishburn:

going, that was bold. Wow. You know?

Jeff Cranmer:

Yeah. Yeah. So that's, so sorry I got the time wrong. I mean, China speed is so fast. If I may borrow a line from Stephen Wright, it's like putting instant coffee in a microwave and going back in time. But John, yeah, and

John Zhu:

that's, and and yes. So we, have about six deals. total deal size is 6 billion U.S. dollar. And that, um, from payment and, uh, new milestones, we collect, uh, more than 5 million U.S. dollars. So we, we did get cash we can really can help us to survive for, for a while. And, uh, talk about a clinical trial. this is one of our vision from day one, become a global bio pharma by global meaning that we really want to, for patients global. And, uh, we wanna build a global clinical team and a global product. So, not long. We have about little bit more than 200 employees. About 30 of them are in U.S. So by the global trial, which I means really MRCT from day one. the downside is that actually is actually more costly to do clinical trial in U.S. as you, as you can tell. but, we feel that because we want to become a global bio pharma, it's really, we have to demonstrate the efficacy and the safety in global patients, including U.S. patients. And, talk about the speed up the clinical trial. To be honest, the sentencing you cannot do, right? I mean, you have to give drug to patients. They have to go through cycle one, cycle two, right. The sentencing, you, you just have to respect the law. Of course, you have to respect the quality. why, why think like Chinese biotech? We are faster if you think about that, right? I think the reason why we're faster is that sometimes we can cut the, what, what we call white space. Just give one example, right. we deliver the IND from IND to first patient. Some company take like three months or four months, and they think it's normal. We think it's not normal. We take like, one month, you know, 45 days first patient, right? And, uh, from our first patient to end of Phase II meeting. 20 months and people think it'll take like three years and four years long months, we think 20 months. So we do work hard. We can cut some waste space. But in the end, Jeff, I think most important thing is that you need to have a clear clinical strategy that's most important, really solve, uh, unmet medical needs. That's number one. And number two, you really have to understand. Both the U.S. practice and the China practice, and sometimes there are synergy between each other. In China, for example, enrollment is actually indeed faster. So currently we have, you know, more than 2,700 patients worldwide, 50% of them are actually X China, including U.S. and Australia. But the China patients actually helps a lot. Right. So when design MRCT, that's the beauty of MRCT instead doing China only, or U.S. on only, you are not helping each other, right? Just give one example. we have a partnership with BioNTech for a HER2 ADC TROP2 and ADC. Just give one example regarding ADC which is a really good target expressed in multiple tumors, including small cell lung cancer, CRPC. HCC, cervical cancer. Our first patient is 2023, July at the time Daiichi way ahead of us have us now we load more than 600 patient. We're showing indications, you know, for example, in other, in like HCC cervical cancer show signals even ahead of Daiichi. So let's talk about the, China speed. I'll stop here. Yeah,

Simone Fishburn:

so, so I wanna actually follow up to, to both of you guys with something that you said there, which is that you said that. from day one you decided to be a global biotech, and I don't know if Akeso has made that same decision. it does bring us back to the in Innovent story and what was notable really in that deal mean you, you might wanna talk about a little bit also, is the, is the fact that they retained 40%. Rights to 40% of the, well both costs and, profits in the U.S. And I am wondering whether this mold, which (BeiGene) BeOne has really been the pioneer of, in terms of starting, like being a China-based company that started with a global outlook. And if you think that we're gonna have more and more China companies that have that global way of, of thinking, can you, can you talk a little bit about that and whether it's what the, the importance of the Innovent deal?

Bing Wang:

I, I think that was a very good deal for both parties. Um, I think in particular, the fact that they're made a deal with Takeda as opposed to being, you know, U.S. pharma was, was actually quite notable. But I, I will say this, Innovent is not your typical China biotech.

Simone Fishburn:

Mm-hmm.

Bing Wang:

Right. There's probably. Three or four companies of size, right. BeOne, Innovent ourselves Akeso, maybe Coen, you know, where we have the balance sheet and the capabilities to be be to do that.

Simone Fishburn:

Mm-hmm.

Bing Wang:

I think Innovent did a very, very good job in China commercializing their product. But this is not true for most biotech. Just like in the U.S. a lot of biotech don't have the resources, so they would actually take more capital and give away more later term.

Simone Fishburn:

I'm not sure how many. U.S. biotechs set themselves up and say, I'm gonna be a global biotech.

Bing Wang:

Yeah. But I think to add to that point, and I think, Simone, you brought up a very good example. I think the first company to really do this is actually Legend. And the, the reason that you can get this type of leverage, and I wanna highlight the Legend as a really good example, Carvykti was really the first case where a product, a therapy that come from China, fundamentally changed global standard of care. Right, because here we talked about innovation. We talk about China's speed, we talk about efficient capital, but end of the day, can a molecule that came out of China, change standard of care for every human being on earth. That's what we hope to do at Akeso, with Ivonescimab, by the way. Right? And obviously with a bigger total addressable market for lung cancer, multiple myeloma. But I think Legend really pioneered that. And I think that needs to be emphasized. And I think, looking at the long game, right? can our product change standard care for every human being on earth? That confidence and then the resources behind it, which Innovent has their, their, you know, significant market cap, significant balance sheet, significant P&L in China to support that. That's what allowed them to do the deal with Takeda, with those structure.

Jeff Cranmer:

And that's of course Legends deal with Johnson and Johnson, for a CAR T I saw Matt wanting to jump in there. Matt, what are your thoughts on the Innovent deal?

Matthew Hewitt:

Uh, well I was just gonna comment more on the, I mean, Innovent, but also the other comments around the clinical trials, because we've actually done some work around this on looking at, how biotechs specifically in the U.S. set up, you know, clinical programs and what's important to them. it's single, usually single center, maybe two or three center clinical trials within one geo. And in fact, we've asked the question of various biotechs in the U.S. are you thinking about other geos? And the answer is always no, because they're not thinking about it until they get through almost a BLA filing before they start thinking about other geos. So I think that is somewhat unique that something we see here in China, to John's point that, you know, where you're gonna see, um, these China, China biotechs really take on some multiple geos at the same time, even simultaneously, even if we're talking about China in Australia, where, you know, with TGA it's quite accepting of, of new, uh, trials. There's, there's various tax credits that are there. you've got well-defined patient populations with a lot of the population being sequenced, even in different, even in different states in Australia. But then of course, then you're always looking at the U.S. because generally, even if it's, it's not really reciprocity, but there will be one way. recognition of like a U.S. IND by China, by Australia, that minimizes your need to do additional activities to set up clinical activities.

Josh Berlin:

Yeah, man, I, I wanted to ask you something. So, you know, I took a few meetings, uh, this week when I wasn't on, uh, stage or doing things in this room and. with a few China biotechs. I won't, name and are um, much earlier stage than, uh, than John or Bing's company. But, um, you know, sat through a couple of presentations with them and one thing that was struck me, was, that several companies, rather than saying sort of proof of concept, which I hear, you know, you hear so much in the U.S. where instead saying proof of signal. That, that that's what they were trying to get. They were trying to get to proof of signal so that they could, essentially use early data to attract, potential partners. So I, I don't know if you, you know, what, what you think about that.

Matthew Hewitt:

Yeah, I mean we, we do have that structure, I would say within the U.S. and Europe, but we classically call it like phase zeros or kind of looking glass trials where, we'll, similar to EsoBiotec did here, you know, with those 2, 3, 4 patients and then look for some efficacy signal. depends on the modality, because many times you're doing lead-in doses. And, I think to John's point, I mean, I think the, the white space that's optimized here that enables you to do that is, is one, kind of time to set up. So, you know, within the U.S. and Europe, it can take a year to activate a single clinical site, whereas here. It's, it's far, far shorter, let's just put it that way. And then I think, you know, some of the other things that we see on the clinical side around spacing out dosing required, wait periods between dosing between patients, you know, as much more minimized here on our risk adjusted basis. So, you know, we can speed things up and get to that signal much more quickly.

Jeff Cranmer:

Alright, we're uh, gonna go to a break shortly. and then we'll come back and we'll talk about the. talent, we're gonna talk about the direction of innovation, and we're gonna talk about the financial markets. so we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back.

Alanna Farro:

BioCentury This Week is brought to you by The 5th East-West Biopharma Summit in South Korea. An arc of innovation is emerging across Asia, and Western biopharma leaders are taking note-from cross-border deals to newcos. In March, 2026, The 5th BioCentury-BayHelix East-West BioPharma Summit visits South Korea for the first time. Meet the biopharma leaders putting Korea innovation on the global map. Learn why Korea has become a clinical trial in manufacturing hub. Discover if Korea is the next hotspot for NewCo formation. Plus, meet biopharma innovators from India to Singapore, to China and Japan. Register now at BioCenturyEastWest.com.

Jeff Cranmer:

And we're back. Simone, are, we've heard from a lot of our Indian colleagues that they were a little pissed off at Josh that he made this meeting during Diwali. Last year, Josh kind of got me a little miffed 'cause he made the meeting at Halloween. Yeah. But you know, if you move it a little earlier, not only do you get to skip ESMO, which I'm sure everyone would love, but it could be during.

Simone Fishburn:

So I, I wanna jump in here, Jeff. And um, I think we have to break it to Josh. I've been. Hinting to him for two days that there is this ground swell. There is this like huge number of people at this conference who want this conference set during the Shanghai Tennis Open next year, Josh. So, you know, I'm going public with this. And the, the pressure's on

Josh Berlin:

we're, we're working on it.

Simone Fishburn:

Most notably. I think that was a yes, right? I think I heard a yes. Then

Jeff Cranmer:

most notably a young man named Alcaraz who has an intense interest in biotech. I understand. You might wanna become a stakeholder in a Akeso or perhaps Duality

Simone Fishburn:

keynote speaker more likely.

Josh Berlin:

He could be a family office. Maybe a family office play.

Jeff Cranmer:

And Simone, I also noticed you, you had some interesting looking socks on today. You wanna tell us about

Simone Fishburn:

we're going this, I think, I think you should. I think you should start with, Josh and Matt's socks.

Jeff Cranmer:

Oh my goodness. Look at these things. BioCentury's this week. Podcast socks.

Josh Berlin:

Yes. We need to give full credit to, uh, Brian Denker, who was mentioned earlier for sourcing, a whole bunch of, BioCentury's This Week, socks, this week, in Shanghai. So if any, uh, of the listeners wanna a pair of socks, he should try to track down Jeff or. Simone at the next event.

Simone Fishburn:

You gotta come to a, you gotta come to a live podcast to get the socks. There's no, I, I wanna to tell you something. I was shamed at the last conference when I had to go with toenail color 'cause I didn't have the socks. So I went out and bought some 'cause I was on London on the way. Some nice London socks here.

Josh Berlin:

Those are good..

Jeff Cranmer:

Well I'm, I'm paying respect to China here. I got some dragon socks. Oh. Because, uh, yo that's what it's about.

Simone Fishburn:

They're a bit low res though. They need to be more,

Jeff Cranmer:

They're low rise. It's, uh, it's true. I didn't have a lot of time before I got on the plane. So you may have seen that sign on some people's desks that say, I'm silently judging your grammar. Has anyone seen that sign? Maybe it's just an editor's thing. Here at BioCentury's, when you're on a panel, we're silently judging your socks and for being a good sport and coming out today. John, you've just won a pair of BioCentury This Week socks. All right. Alright, well let's turn to the financial markets and hey, we have a CFO on our panel. So Bing, I'm gonna go to you. what were you hearing this week?

Bing Wang:

I think, um, across different stages of capital. I think earlier stage people talk about, NewCo formation and, and, and how they think about that, right? I think, we have. some experienced Chinese VCs like James Wang talk about it. You know, it's another source of, funding assets. But then we also had a panel that had some bankers and, folks that are more later stage in the capital. you know, I think Bin Li at Lake Bleu also talked about this, that, you know, people are basically asking what is the state of the Hong Kong market? You know, I think a lot of people are saying potentially there may be. A correction, but it wouldn't be a bad thing. I think people are still optimistic long term, but maybe some near term volatility is, is what we're hearing. But definitely a lot of folks have seen that. Um, biotech is, is um, is innovating. I think end of the day this is no different than NASDAQ where you know, you have to show the data and so far I think, um, the China biotechs have, have delivered on the data.

Simone Fishburn:

So

Jeff Cranmer:

We've seen, far more IPOs. I forget the exact number, but far more IPOs have gotten out on the Hong Kong exchange

Bing Wang:

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cranmer:

than Nasdaq this year.

Bing Wang:

Yes.

Jeff Cranmer:

the key indexes in Hong Kong are way up.

Bing Wang:

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cranmer:

John, uh, why was April the right time for you guys to go out? I don't, until you got out, I think it had been pretty quiet

John Zhu:

We're the first one.

Jeff Cranmer:

Yeah,

Josh Berlin:

you sort of caught the beginning of the wave there. Yeah.

Simone Fishburn:

Well maybe they, I mean, caught the beginning of the wave. They created the wave.

Josh Berlin:

caused the wave. Yeah.

John Zhu:

I think because we are crazy, so, so we actually have a, um, long show with investors in March. It's actually, they're pretty about our asset. Because we, we have assess that have, global potential. For example, our B73, we have the opting we can co-develop with BioNTech. This is similar to like, uh, J&J's 19 Legend deal co-development, and so many U.S. long term investors. They are very interested in this story. So I feel like, hmm, we might have a chance. And then according to plan, so we we're going to launch IPO April and then hit the trade war. So, but at that time, to be honest, we have not a choice. We can back off, right. And choose another point, but who knows what's going to happen. So we just, so since I'm crazy, I just go out and do the IPO, so.

Simone Fishburn:

I wanna go back to your point. I heard sort of a couple of themes. Now you, what did, what was the word you, you used the word correction, right? And I think the words ranged from bubble, it's a bubble that will burst.

Bing Wang:

Try hard not to say that word. Yes, you, you

Simone Fishburn:

tried, but other people said it. Right. And then there was frothy and then there was correction. And generally a feeling that valuations might be too high. But still, I would say net net, a positive kind of sentiment that that things will. Maintain in a, in a good direction is, is that, you know, one was like, yes, we're outta the tunnel. Like, is the light at the end of the tunnel? We're outta the tunnel kind of thing.

Bing Wang:

Yeah. I think if, if I could comment on that maybe more broadly. I think what we discovered that investors all around the world. Have no problem investing in the Hong Kong market. It's a very robust market. It's a very developed market. You know, I think after New York, maybe after London, you know, Hong Kong's a very developed market that gives people a lot of confidence in the quality of the investors, the quality of the regulatory requirement to be listed. And then, you know, the quality of the company's here, you know, so, at Akeso we did a$250 million raise last October. In August we did a$450 million raise. Most of the investors are overseas, right? We have a lot of investors that came in from Europe. We have some quite a bit from the U.S. and obviously Singapore and, and other areas, but it's a very international set of investors that came into our cap table. So I think with that in mind, and obviously, you know, we're of a, of a different size and many of the other companies that recently listed, but I think good quality companies can list in Hong Kong and don't feel like. It's somehow a handicapped just'cause you're not on nasdaq. So that is kind of the thing that I would say I want to emphasize is that the Hong Kong market is, is, is quite robust. It's gonna have your up and downs like any other market, but we're attracting very international European and North American investors in, into our cap table.

Josh Berlin:

Yeah. Yeah. Bing, I mean I, you know, I think for our U.S. listeners, um, you know, the idea that it's in a, a bubble or that there's a, irrational exuberance. It might be a, um. A bit of a shock to folks that haven't been following the story this year. But, you know, I had a few discussions, uh, this week, where, um, a discussion with one of the top, lawyers, uh, in Hong Kong, as well as one of the top bankers who both told me independently that they were turning away work. That they, they literally couldn't handle the workload and were turning away good clients that they would've normally taken 'cause they were afraid they couldn't deliver the work. thought that was an interesting, take when, when the bankers are turning awake, too much work, I won't use the word bubble, but maybe there's something going, something going on. Um, but there's also a, a long queue, right?'cause you need to get approved to go IPO in, in Hong Kong. And there's, there's a pretty long queue right now. The wait was like,

Simone Fishburn:

what is it, six months or, I mean, it's, it's a long wait.

Josh Berlin:

Yeah.

Simone Fishburn:

Yeah. Six to eight months. Can, can I pick up on something else that you talked about? Um, You talked about people rewarding innovation and investors understanding that, tying that together because that's sort of what I wanted to, pick up on as well in terms of the thread, tying that together. Let's go all the way back to what you said about Legend, setting a new standard. You yourselves did that at Akeso with the Summit data where you told the world, wait, we can actually be better.

Bing Wang:

I'm sorry. Our data,

Simone Fishburn:

your data,

Bing Wang:

Our Akeso data. Just be clear. The, sorry. Absolutely right. The, the Akeso data right in within the partnership, but the Akeso data, um, that grabbed the attention of the world because it could be better than Keytruda alone. And so that was, I think for many people a turning point. Meaning turning their heads to look at, wait a minute, this isn't just a fast follower story and what we are now starting to see is more what we call first order innovation. So one of the themes that I wanted to raise, Jeff, China is known so well for, and we heard this throughout the last two days, its incredible ability to do anything with an antibody fast and whatever you want, right? Can make it an ADC, a bispecific ADC. You can make it a bispecific, you know, various things. But one of the questions that came up is, is it gonna start now? Is the next wave gonna be siRNA? So we heard that in several different threads and I thought that was interesting.

Jeff Cranmer:

Yeah. Well, um, I guess we also heard a lot about, Gene and cell therapy. Uh, what was the number of programs?

Simone Fishburn:

Well, there was what the number that I think you're thinking about is, I think Nisa said there are 130 in vivo CAR T programs.

Jeff Cranmer:

Yeah, that's right. thought that siRNA would be Comparable to that. Quickly. Uh, Matt, from where you sit, where do you see the direction of innovation going, in China?

Matthew Hewitt:

Yeah, I mean, I, coming back to the cell and gene therapy numbers, I mean, we, we track those via several consortia that we're a part of. And generally still, I would say that the U.S. is first still in assets and trials. I, China has been very, very quickly catching up though, and is definitely nipping at the heels of, of the U.S. and certainly I think we're seeing that speed up now. and then we're seeing a lot of the kind of seminal platforms and nucleic acids around siRNA, but other nucleic acid platforms in general. and they're coming up to the point where there can be some additional innovation done to them. I think it's, uh, you know, given the experience, and the track record that China and the innovators here have in antibodies. It is, you know, a ripe area for further innovation and optimization. we've got some really good, uh, de-risking in terms of clinical assets that have gone, gone on to become commercial and then in, in multiple geos. You know, they've worked out pretty well. The, uh, um, I, we didn't touch on this earlier, but another thing that it can be a difficulty is getting clinicians comfortable with a new modality and, and then giving it to patients or prescribing it for patients. I know within advanced therapies we always talk about vein to vein time. But the actual term that we started using lately is brain to vein, because that's when the clinicians will actually start prescribing them to the patients in large numbers, which is ultimately what the terms, uh, commercial success. So I think that coupled with, you know, kind of the familiarity of regulators and reimbursement strategies is gonna be, you know, present a pretty nice, uh, opportunity there.

Jeff Cranmer:

we're, kind of coming up on time and I, we, I do want to get to talent, but John, I really do wanna get your take as sort of being at the forefront of ADCs. what are you excited about? What are you kind of hearing about bubbling up? Just, just real quick.

John Zhu:

Real quick. Actually, one year ago I said, uh, something that's actually, at that time it's very radical. In BioCentury forum, I said watch out, Chinese biotech is coming. Because biotech is biology plus technology and the Chinese biotech, you know, we're very strong in engineering. This year, I'm gonna say slightly different point. I think the boundary between biology, we'll talk about target, right? And the technology, when we talk about the ADCs linker payload, it's actually become blurred because if you have a strong technology, so you can really help you validate your biology. Actually you can speed up, speed up your science and therefore have a true innovation like a PD-1, or VEGF. I'm not sure that's biology or engineering. We talk about bispecifics but the the boundaries broad. In summary, I think the true innovation will come out from Chinese biotech.

Simone Fishburn:

I agree with that.

Jeff Cranmer:

Alright, well, talent is shifting. That's one thing I learned this week. Back in the day, the leaders of China, biotech companies, 10 years ago, they were returnees the so-called sea turtles who they went to get their PhD in the U.S. They worked at Novartis, J&J, you name it. They came back, they founded companies and I was talking to Vince Deng this week, who was at Med-Fine Capital. And, and he started a new fund a few years ago. And he said for him, he was like, Hey, I'm gonna look at the person who was number two, number three, number four, working for one of these returnees and w ork with them to set up a new company. And so that, that was interesting to me. I, what, what have you been hearing, Simone?

Simone Fishburn:

Yeah, I mean, thi this came up, I had a conversation with Kevin Li. It also came up on, on the panel, the scene setter panel. And so definitely this generation, I'm gonna call it our generation, you know, in China, those, those folks, it, it was standard to go to the U.S. get your training, get your credibility, and come, and you, you know, those people then came back to China and that's been the mantra. In fact, that's been the mantra globally. It was the mantra in the U.K. and, and Europe as well. And what I'm hearing is that this emerging generation in China. Of, you know, maybe the next leaders, they don't feel that they have to go to the U.S. in order to get the training. And I think, Matt, you made the point earlier when we talked that they may still get the training of how things are done. Now in China by working from MNCs inside China and or as you point Jeff, working for people who've done that. The point that I was making was that that generation doesn't feel the need to go to the U.S. They'll be more domestically generated, you know, talent and the analogy was like, there was Genentech, and then Genentech spawned a whole number of, uh, you know, other companies. Matt looks like you wanna respond to that.

Matthew Hewitt:

That. I mean, I, I, I'll probably like reiterate what I said this morning, which was that, I mean, to your story, Jeff, I mean, how did that fund find those people? They went to the people that trained in the U.S. I mean, that's the starting point,

Jeff Cranmer:

Right.

Matthew Hewitt:

and it's not to say that. I mean, it's gonna evolve from that point, but the starting point remains that the only way they're finding those people is by finding the people that went and trained in the U.S. and came back. So if we start from that anchor, if you will. Then certainly you can iterate upon that and then, you know, there's gonna be subsequent, generations so to speak of talent that are, don't need to then go to the U.S. but have the pedigree of training under our folks. And I think coming to back to John's point around, taking more global outlook as a Chinese biotech. I mean, to me that happens from this first generation of talent that trained in the U.S. came back, has the experience of global, commercialization versus local commercialization. And if you look at a lot of the U.S. biotechs, like I said before, I mean, I'll say the reason why a lot of those U.S. biotechs focus on U.S. only, is it because a lot of times those folks only know how to commercialize in the U.S. They don't necessarily know how to commercialize in China. They don't know how to commercialize in Japan. Korea anywhere here in APAC. So, I mean, I think it gives U.S. a kind of a, a really good, uh, legitimacy to the Chinese biotech scene that they've got a more global outlook on the talent.

Simone Fishburn:

Can we get your thoughts on this as well? You know, running a company? Yeah. And what are you seeing?

Bing Wang:

Well, we definitely see a mix, right? So at Akeso, a lot of the, the senior management have, you know, overseas experience, you know, myself included, but. I would say the next layer down, right, the VPs and the directors are, are all mostly domestic, talent and trained some of them at other China biotechs, some of them at multinationals. Um, I think, uh, a, a lot of our folks in CMC manufacturing, for example, worked at, you know, the multinationals in China. Because those, you actually need to know best in class western processes. So I think we definitely seen, seen that trend in, in, in the next few years as, as these folks get more experience, you know, they'll move into senior management, you know, uh, position and then becoming some of the C-suite. We're already seeing a lot of that. But I think one point, one of the kind of highlight, adjacent to this topic is, I think the best quote that I heard for the last few days came from George Chen, from D3 . He said, you only start a biotech if you fundamentally want to come up and, and develop a drug to save humanity. That's the only reason to do it. So I think I wanna bring this back and that, and all the topic about talents. I mean, we can't forget the entrepreneurs, right? I mean, you think about Michelle, Michelle Xia, our CEO and, and Co-Founder, right. She, basically with her three other Co-Founder's willed, Akeso and Ivonescimab into existence. I mean, look at John, right. It's, I would say you have to give a lot of the credit to the entrepreneurs just like in the West, that actually will these companies, into existence.

Jeff Cranmer:

Alright, well, we're up on time. I, Josh is sort of. the man who brought all this together, Josh, uh, parting thought.

Josh Berlin:

Yeah, I mean, first off, just wanted to thank everyone, uh, for coming out this week, uh, to the China summit. You know, I thought the energy was just infectious. It was, it was amazing. So, really appreciate everybody bringing the ever energy, the partnering, the, the hallway discussions, and all the great discussions on stage as well. And, we would very much, love to have you guys back next year when we come for our 13th China Healthcare Summit. we'll also be, in Asia again in March, BioCentury-BayHelix and McKinsey with our 5th East-West Summit, in Seoul, Korea. So we, uh, very much hope to see everybody at that event as well,'cause we think there's a lot of opportunities, um, across Asia that are starting to emerge now.

Jeff Cranmer:

And I'd very much like to thank, Matt Hewitt, VP and CTO of Charles Rivers Manufacturing Business Division, John Zu, CEO of Duality Biologics, and Bing Wang, CFO of Akeso. Simone, of course. And Josh as ever. And thank all of you for listening in we hope that you, uh, tune into our podcast. Like it, subscribe to it, and for our listeners around the world, we will catch you next Monday with a new episode of the BioCentury This Week podcast.

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.