By August, VC has injected more than $1 billion to Chinese biotech in Q3, already more than double the number of Q3 in 2024. Financing biotech companies are concentrated on RNA, TCE, in vivo gene editing and in vivo CAR-T.
Apricot Capital led investments in two biotechs, Vibrant Therapeutics and Vivatides Therapeutics. Vibrant has raised tens of millions of USD in Series A funding to advance its T-cell engager (TCE) platform. Vivatides closed a $10 million seed funding round to advance its extrahepatic siRNA delivery platform.
IDG Capital led investments in two biotechs, Minowa Pharma and MagicRNA. Minowa raised RMB 100 million in a Series A round to focus on the development of novel medications in the spiritual and medicinal beauty domains. MagicRNA announced a Series Pre-A+ funding round to develop pipelines based on its engineered cell-targeted lipid nanoparticle (EnC-LNP) platform.
August saw two biotechs successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, namely Ab&B Bio-Tech, and Innogen. Guangzhou-based biotech Innogen has raised HK$610 million to fund the clinical trials and commercialization of its core product, Efsubaglutide Alfa, a GLP-1-targeted drug to treat diabetes, obesity, and MASH.
In August, BeOne Medicines signed an agreement with Royalty Pharma to sell its royalty rights on the worldwide sales, excluding China, of Imdelltra (tarlatamab) for an upfront payment of $885 million. The upfront payment is second only to the $1.25 billion from 3Sbio and Pfizer so far this year.
In addition, Visirna, a subsidiary of Arrowhead, sold the RNAi therapeutic candidate plozasiran in Greater China to Sanofi, receiving a $130 million upfront payment and up to $265 million in potential regulatory milestones.
Fosun Pharma signed two out-licensing deals in August. Expedition Therapeutics paid $120 million in upfront cash to acquire exclusive rights to develop and commercialize a DPP-1 inhibitor XH-S004 for rights outside of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. SitalaBio will pay up to $670 million to Fosun in exchange for the development and marketing rights to a small-molecule drug FXS6837 in global ex-China markets.
