While partnering activities reached new highs in 2020, Chinese biopharma players found it more difficult to snatch good deals in a more competitive landscape. They now need to act faster and do more preparation work to seize partnering opportunities, panelists said at the Chinabio Partnering Forum.
Digital health and diagnostic efforts continue to dominate med-tech deal-making so far in 2021, while activity focused on medical devices has dropped over the last few years. COVID-19 partnerships also have fallen since last year. Digital health accounts for 43%, the largest portion, of deals this year. About 239 deals are targeting this space, including pandemic efforts. Diagnostic efforts represent about 19%, or 103, of the total deals.
China saw $28.5 billion invested in its life sciences sector in 2020, which was double the previous year’s amount and sets a five-year high. Partnering activities and IPOs also grew exponentially over the last five years to set records.
HONG KONG – Olix Pharmaceuticals Inc. has entered an extensive research collaboration to test its RNAi therapeutic, OLX-104C, with Fimanac, PCI Biotech Holding ASA’s delivery technology for nucleic acid-based therapies, with the aim of reducing off-target effects while treating androgenic alopecia, or hair loss.
About 13 years after four MIT graduate students and a computer science professor launched Ginkgo Bioworks Inc., the Boston-based synthetic biology platform business is merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in the largest life sciences deal of its kind to date.
Little more than a year ago, when COVID-19 lockdowns began, turned out to be a prime time for finding the right funding and partners. That’s when privately held Capsigen Inc. was on a search that ended with a Biogen Inc. deal that could add up to $1.3 billion.
DUBLIN – Mina Therapeutics Ltd. continues to make progress in its long-term ambition to establish small activating RNA (saRNA) as a new therapeutic modality. The biotech has now entered a multitarget research collaboration with Eli Lilly and Co., in which it is receiving $25 million up front and up to $245 million in development and commercial milestones per product.
China saw $28.5 billion invested in its life sciences sector in 2020, which was double the previous year’s amount and sets a five-year high. Partnering activities and IPOs also grew exponentially over the last five years to set records.
Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD) has decided to spin off its diabetes care business, after nearly a century growing a broad portfolio of insulin injection devices. The transaction, which will result in a publicly traded company, tentatively dubbed Newco, is expected to be completed in the first half of 2022.