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Week in Review: Innovent's Hong Kong IPO: Raising $422 Million at $2 Billion Valuation
Deals and Financings
Innovent Biologics of
HiFiBiO Therapeutics, a Boston, Paris and Shanghai company, acquired H-Immune, a French biotech with an in vitro immunization-based fully human antibody generation platform (IVI) (see story). HiFiBiO has developed its own immunotherapy discovery platform based on single-B-cell screening. It said H-Immune would complement its discovery efforts by identifying first-in-class targets for multiple types of immune cells. H-Immune brings with it a pipeline of novel early stage cancer candidates. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
iCell Gene Therapeutics, a New York-Zhongshan biopharma, formed a research partnership for its CD19 CAR-T therapy with LineaRx, a subsidiary of Applied DNA Sciences (NSDQ: APDN) (see story). LineaRx is developing a non-viral, plasmid-free (NVPF) CAR-T cell manufacturing platform, which it intends to make available to CAR-T developers. The company will transform iCell's CD-19 candidate into LinCART19, a non-viral, plasmid free anti-CD19 CAR-T drug candidate. Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed.
Genecast Biotechnology of Beijing acquired exclusive China rights to the Tissue of Origin (TOO) test for difficult-to-identify tumors developed by Cancer Genetics (NSDQ: CGIX) of New Jersey (see story). TOO, a microarray-based gene expression test, analyzes a tumor's genomic information to identify its origin, which helps to classify metastatic, poorly differentiated, or undifferentiated cancers. Founded in 2014, Genecast has developed circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) detection technology that provides individualized cancer diagnoses. Last year, the company raised $18 million in a Series B round led by Tshinghua Holdings.
Trials and Approvals
CStone Pharmaceuticals of Suzhou announced
Ascletis Pharma (HK; 1672) of
Singlera Genomics, a San Diego-Shanghai diagnostics company, reported its ColonES blood-based colorectal cancer diagnostic showed high sensitivity and specificity in an early
Hutchison China MediTech (Chi-Med) (AIM/NSDQ: HCM) started a China Phase I trial of its novel spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk) inhibitor as a first line treatment in elderly patients with acute myeloid leukemia (see story). The molecule, HMPL-523, will be administered in combination with an approved nucleoside metabolic inhibitor. In September, Chi-Med's lead drug, Elunate® (fruquintinib), was approved in
Disclosure: none.
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