James Xue, CANbridge Pharmaceuticals CEO
Though IPO activity has slowed in the US significantly, a Qiming Venture-backed biotech took the public leap in a Hong Kong debut Friday.
CANbridge Pharmaceuticals began trading on the HKEX after raising about $77.4 million in its IPO, according to a Qiming release. The move comes a little less than two years after CANbridge’s last raise, when it pulled in $98 million from a global syndicate joined by RA Capital.
Shares of CANbridge debuted at HK$12.18 apiece, but when Friday’s session ended they had fallen about 27% to HK$8.90 each.
The biotech has a heap of rare disease and gene therapy programs, with 10 products and candidates being researched across 13 different indications. Roughly half of the IPO cash is expected to go toward the glioblastoma program CAN008, a glycosylated CD95-Fc fusion protein currently in Phase II studies.
About one fourth of the raise will go toward CANbridge’s other major programs, the company said. While most of CANbridge’s pipeline focus is centered around rare diseases — most of its clinical candidates and its only approved products are in this space — the IPO signifies a renewed emphasis in cancer indications as CAN008 is the biotech’s sole oncology candidate.
But the biotech has also been pushing into the gene therapy space, though that’s a bit farther behind. CANbridge is researching three gene therapies in Fabry disease, Pompe disease and an as yet undisclosed indication, all of which remain in the preclinical phase.
The IPO comes as US biotech activity grinds to a near halt following a pandemic boom that saw tens of billions of dollars funneled to the industry. While the total figure raised throughout 2021 remains around $15 billion and reached $16.5 billion last year, more and more companies have priced at the low ends of their ranges, ostensibly leading to more hesitancy to go to Nasdaq.
Over the weekend, Evercore analyst Josh Schimmer put out a note detailing the slowdown, detailing how mean and median performance for 2021’s IPO class have both been negative, down 20% and 29% respectively. That contrasts with each of the last 10 years of IPOs, where mean performance is positive and median is negative.
Rather than fund IPOs, investors have taken to early-stage financings as their new preferred choice, with Schimmer writing the shift ‘has presumably been driven by a combination of low interest rates, exciting new emerging technologies, and challenges with commercialization which makes later stage companies less attractive for new capital.’
Part of the commercial challenge has to do with the huge number of biotechs working in oncology — Schimmer notes nearly half of all private and IPO biotechs focus on this area.
Going forward, Schimmer says the industry may see more M&A action next month, as after most ‘tough biotech years’ there is historically strong merger appetite in January. It’s remains to be seen if that will play out, but Schimmer’s analysis came at somewhat of a fortuitous moment, with Pfizer announcing early Monday it would acquire Arena Pharmaceuticals in a $6.7 billion deal.
Sensor-based technology for clinical trial data collection represents the latest medical paradigm shift. There are more than 700 clinical studies involving wearable devices currently underway in the United States. A study from Intel IT projects their inclusion in clinical trials will surge to 70% by 2025.
Apps, biosensors and patient-centered technologies increase visibility of comprehensive patient data. Pharma leaders anticipate the benefits of wearables to include better data (58%), faster results (33%) and lower trial costs (10%).
When Bristol Myers Squibb celebrated the approval of ozanimod — branded Zeposia — in ulcerative colitis earlier this year, the company touted the first gastrointestinal indication for an S1P receptor modulator.
Now Pfizer wants to give the pharma rival a run for its money.
Pfizer is dropping $6.7 billion to acquire Arena Pharmaceuticals, whose lead drug, etrasimod, targets the sphingosine 1-phosphate receptor.
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Merck’s potential Covid-19 treatment molnupiravir will not be used in France, French regulators said Friday.
The French National Authority of Health cited the potential impact of the Omicron variant, the fact that Regeneron’s mAb cocktail is more effective, and the pill’s own lack of efficacy as reasons for denying early access of the drug to patients experiencing mild to moderate cases of Covid-19. France has already pre-ordered hundreds of thousands of the pills, with the goal of treating 50,000 patients.
The Senate Finance Committee on Saturday released the latest text of President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion spending package, paid for at least in part with new negotiating power for Medicare and inflation rebates drugmakers will have to pay if their drug prices rise too quickly each year.
But now, generic drugs at risk of shortage and biosimilars have been cut out of the rebates, as their industry lobbying groups had sought. They’d said the inclusion of such rebates and negotiations could increase the likelihood of drug shortages and create barriers to competition.
Jacob Van Naarden (Lilly Oncology)
Jake Van Naarden, who rules the oncology roost at Eli Lilly, is back in the dealmaking game.
Monday morning he uncorked a deal to provide Flagship-backed Foghorn Therapeutics $380 million — $300 million in cash and $80 million for a premium equity deal — to jump on board the biotech’s development platform. The deal gives him co-development and co-commercialization rights to their BRM selective program — which uses protein degradation and enzymatic inhibition — directed against BRG1 mutations. Those mutations are aligned along 5% of all tumors and 10% of NSCLC.
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Precision CMO Alan List (Diane Bondareff/AP Images for Moffitt Cancer Center)
The next generation of cell therapies have focused in large part on the development of allogeneic — better known as ‘off-the-shelf — drugs that can cut manufacturing times and hopefully evade a patient’s immune system. One of the early players in that race has new data at #ASH21 that show deep responses but will also raise fresh concerns about these therapies’ durability.
Precision Biosciences’ PBCAR0191, a CD19-directed allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy, posted a complete response rate of 59% in 22 heavily pretreated patients with various forms of relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and acute lymphocytic leukemia, six of whom had previously received an autologous CAR-T before dosing, the biotech said.
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The bulk of this week’s report is brought to you by Endpoints editors Nicole DeFeudis and Max Gelman, who are covering for me as I take a few days off after the big Women in Biopharma R&D event. We are really proud of both the special report and the live panel, which featured some great stories from trailblazing leaders and insights on gender diversity in biotech. Do check them out below if you haven’t had a chance.
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Stéphane Bancel, Moderna CEO (Endpoints JPM20/Jeff Rumans)
Last fall, as their Covid-19 vaccine crossed the finish line, Moderna unveiled plans to take its newly proven mRNA platform and use it to effectively change how the world blocks humanity’s most persistent viral foes.
In addition to their pre-existing vaccine programs, executives announced new ones for flu, where vaccines have chronically underperformed, and HIV, which has eluded every inoculation effort over nearly 40 years. In flu, the other mRNA vaccine companies — BioNTech (with Pfizer), Translate Bio (under Sanofi), and CureVac (with GSK) — all had similar ambitions, hoping to make shots that were as high as 80% effective.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Jacquelyn Martin/AP Images)
Back in January 2019, the late House Oversight Committee chair Elijah Cummings kicked off a nearly 3-year-long drug pricing investigation that culminated today in a major new report detailing how prices for vital drugs have risen substantially since their launch, while calling on the Senate to pass a bill that will allow Medicare to negotiate some prices.
The committee’s investigation focused on 12 of the most expensive drugs for Medicare, showing massive price spikes that have accumulated over the years and made some drugs, like insulin, entirely unaffordable for some, to the point where some diabetics have had to ration their life-saving insulin, and some have died.
https://endpts.com/qiming-backed-canbridge-gets-its-hong-kong-ipo-as-nasdaq-slowdown-prompts-renewed-market-analysis/
