In May, China Biopharma completed 14 fundraising rounds, raising a total of $203.5 million.



The largest financings included a $50 million Series B+ round for AusperBio Therapeutics, a company focused on the development of oligonucleotide therapies, and another $50 million Series B2 round for Sirius Therapeutics, a company specializing in siRNA discovery.

Within one year, AusperBio has successfully completed three rounds of financing, raising a total of $160 million. The funds will be used to advance the clinical development of its core candidate, AHB-137, a novel unconjugated antisense oligonucleotide for chronic hepatitis B (CHB).

Sirius Therapeutics has three clinical-stage programs and a deep preclinical pipeline. Within the same month, the company achieved a collaboration with CRISPR Therapeutics to co-develop its most advanced compound, SRSD107, a Factor XI-targeted siRNA therapy which has been progressed to the phase 2 clinical stage.

In May, two biopharmaceutical companies from China were listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, a leading biopharmaceutical manufacturer, raised approximately HK$9.89 billion (US$1.27 billion), making it one of the largest offerings in Hong Kong so far this year. 



The other company is PegBio, whose core product, PB-119, a GLP-1 receptor agonist for Type 2 diabetes, is expected to be commercially launched in mainland China by the end of this year.

Multinational pharmaceutical companies continued to seek new projects in China, with a particular interest in PD-1/L1xVEGF bispecifics. In May, Pfizer paid $1.25 billion upfront to acquire 3SBio’s PD-1xVEGF bispecific, SSGJ-707, for rights outside of China.






In the PD-1/L1xVEGF space, Summit Therapeutics is taking the lead by licensing ivonescimab from Akeso. Last November, Merck paid $588 million to acquire LaNova Medicines' LM-299. In early June, Bristol Myers Squibb purchased BNT327 from BioNTech for $1.5 billion upfront, just over six months after BioNTech acquired the asset from the Chinese biotech company Biotheus.



Astellas continues to show interest in ADCs. In May, Astellas inked a collaboration with Suzhou-based Evopoint Biosciences to acquire XNW27011, a CLDN18.2-targeted ADC, for an upfront $130 million, with a total deal value exceeding $1.5 billion.