The drumbeat of news regarding Asian pharmaceutical companies, especially China, continues to grow louder. At the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, Akeso took center stage with his presentation on ibonecimab, and Fierce’s Angus Liu had the opportunity to dig deeper into the big picture and symbolism behind the event. Elsewhere, calls for a crackdown on Chinese biotech deals are growing louder in Washington. Even more.
At last weekend’s ASCO plenary session, Akeso made history in China’s biopharmaceutical industry. In a series of subsequent interviews, market watchers explained to Fierce that the rise of biopharmaceuticals in this country is now undeniable, and that it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
In Washington, D.C., two lawmakers called for expanding the COINS Act to include biopharmaceutical transactions. The law, recently passed as part of the US defense spending bill, creates new notification requirements for US companies investing in certain areas of China. Biotechnology is not yet included, but some lawmakers are trying to change that. And skeptics within the industry are speaking out.
3. Takeda touts ‘immense potential’ of Innovent’s PD-1/IL-2 bispecific after seeing survival data
On the drug development front, ASCO provided partners Takeda and Innovent with a glimpse into the potential benefits of bispecific candidate IBI363 in patients with advanced immunotherapy-resistant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Teresa Vitetti, president of Takeda’s global oncology business, said in an interview with Fiers that she has “huge expectations” for the new drug candidate. Separately, Innovent on Thursday reported victory for another drug, IBI343, in partnership with Takeda, in a Phase 3 clinical trial in patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic CLDN18.2-positive gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma in China and Japan.
ASCO was further exposed to intrigue with the revelation that Legend Scientific founder Frank Huang, MD, is returning with a new company, WonderCell Therapeutics. The idea behind Wondercel and its approach is to create an off-the-shelf universal CAR-T platform to overcome the pitfalls associated with two prominent bottlenecks in the cell therapy industry: production scalability and gene editing. Huang returned to ASCO after Legend Biotech made headlines nine years ago at a conference when it presented data on the drug that would become Carvykti.
These days, no week is complete without an Eli Lilly business development deal, and this week was no exception. On Monday, the Indianapolis drug giant teamed up with South Korea’s Hanmi Pharma in a $1.2 billion deal centered on its GLP-2 drug prospects. Hours later, the company announced a partnership with China’s Hisco to focus on developing a small number of drugs. The latter’s contract announcement did not provide details regarding the goal.
After Bristol-Myers Squibb invested more than $800 million in a first-in-class bispecific antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), there are signs that the bet is paying off. In a China-only study, the drug, an EGFRxHER3 ADC called isalontamab blenditecan (Isabren), significantly reduced the risk of death by 40% compared to physician-selected chemotherapy in previously treated triple-negative breast cancer patients. This outcome could create new rivalries between candidates and existing TROP2 ADCs.
