From March 2021 to April 2022, there have been seven deals in ophthalmology. Ophthalmic drugs have become an important target of in-licensing deals in China.
A drugmaker specializing in medicines for children raising nearly $15.7 million in April 2022 shows a shifting interest toward this area. Early-stage biotech companies also made up 18 of the 27 financing deals.
April 2022 saw a number of foreign and licensed drugs approved in China, with the majority of them in oncology and rheumatology.
Several early-stage out-licensing deals inked by Chinese biotech firms to carry their in-house technology platforms and pipelines to the global market marked the dealmaking space of March 2022.
The month of March saw a string of approvals handed out by the NMPA, with the most significant being two domestically developed anti-PD-1 inhibitors getting green lighted to treat MSI-H/dMMR solid tumors in China for the first time ever.
As China battles its worst COVID outbreak, investors have turned their attentions to RNA-based therapies again. But this time, companies are flogging their platform technologies rather than specific programs.
Huadong Medicine announced a series of three in-licensing deals with a combined value of $1.667 billion, pushing the total deal value for February to $1.883 billion, edging over the $1.681 billion the previous month.
Cell therapy and gene therapy companies extended a trend from the second half of 2021 by making up 11 of the 21 financing deals in February. PharmaDJ expects this trend to continue throughout the year.
Chinese regulators approved 11 drugs in February. Uses and indications ran a wide gamut, including two drugs for atopic dermatitis and six new molecular entities that were approved for the first time.