$250M AstraZeneca spinoff preps leap into 3-way battle with titans for a rare disease market that spans the globe
Just a little more than a year since Bing Yao made the leap from AstraZeneca to his own startup — with $250 million of support from Chinese investors and 6 drugs plucked from the Big Pharma’s pipeline — the newly coined biotech CEO is rolling out positive pivotal data and a quick pitch to the FDA.
Viela CEO Yao tells me that their anti-CD-19 antibody inebilizumab scored clearly promising data in their key trial for patients with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, a rare disease that can cause pain and blindness.
“There are no on-label drugs,” says Yao. “It’s really a terrible disease.”
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