At Bio Japan 2024, policymakers and industry leaders pledged to make Japan a land of drug discovery to attract native and foreign drug developers. Like many Asian countries, Japan is harnessing and prioritizing the bio sector to drive economic growth, throwing its weight behind its 10-year Bioeconomy initiative to create bioclusters and increase investment.
From local drug discovery to global innovation, economic uncertainty is taking a toll on China’s innovative biotech system, forcing local companies to weather unpredictable storms, investors said during the Chinabio Partnering Forum in Shanghai in September.
Ausperbio Therapeutics Inc. raised $110 million from two financing rounds in 2024 to advance its lead antisense oligonucleotide candidate as a functional cure for chronic hepatitis B.
AI pulled in major financings and approvals for Asia med-techs in 2024 as Asia Pacific countries played to individual strengths to maximize AI’s applications in the health care sector. While breakaway AI technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT reshaped and boosted many industries, AI also drove major financings for APAC med-techs weathering a wider macroeconomic downturn, with AI-based companies accounting for five out of 11 IPOs tracked on BioWorld’s med-tech IPOs list.
SK Bioscience Co. Ltd. won €50 million (₩75.5 billion, US$52.03 million) up front from Sanofi SA to expand an earlier agreement to develop and commercialize novel pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs). The first deal resulted in GBP-410 (SP-0202), its pediatric 21-valent PCV candidate that moved into phase III study last week.
AI-powered drug R&D platform firm Oncocross Co. Ltd. is leading the procession of year-end Korea biotech IPOs this week, pricing an offering of about 11.85 million shares on the Korea Exchange at ₩7,300 each for gross proceeds of ₩85.56 billion (US$59.5 million).
Onconic Therapeutics Inc., a subsidiary of Jeil Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., saw its shares (KOSDAQ:476060) ascend for two consecutive days after debuting with a ₩20.15 billion (US$13.89 million) IPO on the Korea Exchange Dec. 19. Seoul, South Korea-based Onconic’s Kosdaq IPO offered about 1.55 million shares at ₩13,000 each, which was lowered from its original price band of ₩16,000 to ₩18,000 per share after demand forecasting.
A year after Generate Biomedicines Inc. pulled off its $273 million series C financing round, the Flagship Pioneering-spawned and AI-powered protein therapeutics firm drew investment of an undisclosed amount from the Samsung Life Science Fund Dec. 18.
SK Bioscience Co. Ltd. won €50 million (₩75.5 billion, US$52.03 million) up front from Sanofi SA to expand an earlier agreement to develop and commercialize novel pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs). The first deal resulted in GBP-410 (SP-0202), its pediatric 21-valent PCV candidate that moved into phase III study last week.
South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety cleared Acryl Inc.’s Acryl-D01 as the country’s first AI-based digital therapeutic software solution to aid depression screening and diagnosis on Dec. 20. Approved as a class II software as a medical device, Acryl-D01 utilizes a patient’s medical records to quantify and analyze the individual’s emotional response and assess the probability of having clinical depression based on the data.
