Al­pham­ab On­col­o­gy has in­spired a surge of lo­cal in­ter­est in what will like­ly be the Hong Kong Stock Ex­change’s last biotech run of the year, pric­ing its IPO on the high end of the range and rais­ing over $230 mil­lion (HK$1.83 bil­lion).

Af­ter re­jig­ging the of­fer­ing struc­ture and mak­ing up to 50% avail­able for en­thu­si­as­tic lo­cal in­vestors, the biotech sold 179.4 mil­lion shares at $1.31 (HK$10.2) and saw its stock rise to $1.77 ($13.8) on the first day of trad­ing.

Ting Xu

CEO Ting Xu told re­porters he ex­pects to file for ap­proval of their lead PD-L1 drug at Chi­na’s Na­tion­al Med­ical Prod­ucts Ad­min­is­tra­tion in H2 2020, and the de­ci­sion could come by the end of the year in the most ide­al sce­nario.

If ap­proved, the sub­cu­ta­neous in­jec­tion of KN035 (en­vafolimab) would be­come the sec­ond PD-L1 agent to fol­low five PD-1 drugs on the mar­ket: Mer­ck’s Keytru­da, Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb’s Op­di­vo, Jun­shi’s Tuoyi, In­novent’s Tyvyt and Jiang­su Hen­grui’s cam­re­lizum­ab. As­traZeneca has just clinched an OK for Imfinzi.

Among them, Tyvyt — which In­novent is part­nered with Eli Lil­ly on — re­cent­ly earned a cov­et­ed spot on the na­tion­al re­im­burse­ment list by slash­ing its price to $403 (RMB2843) per 100mg, down 64% from its orig­i­nal price, which is al­ready much low­er than its for­eign coun­ter­parts.

There are prof­its to be made even at a sim­i­lar price lev­el, Xu as­sured re­porters.

But even as the check­point agents pile on, Al­pham­ab’s re­al am­bi­tion lies in the bis­pecifics field, where Xu has plowed for six years.

Two of Al­pham­ab’s bis­pecifics are now in Phase II test­ing, in­clud­ing KN046 (PD-L1/CT­LA4) and KN026 (HER2). For the lat­ter, Xu is plot­ting three routes of at­tack: a head-to-head with Her­ceptin in front­line breast can­cer; tri­als in pa­tients with low ex­pres­sion or re­sis­tance to Her­ceptin; and a bio­mark­er-dri­ven ap­proach.

About half of the IPO funds will go to­ward clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and po­ten­tial com­mer­cial­iza­tion of KN046, with a BLA planned for 2021.

The new round of cash will al­so fund an on­go­ing Phase II study of CD80-tar­get­ing im­munomod­u­la­tor KN019 for au­toim­mune con­di­tions.

Matthews Funds, Or­biMed, Green­woods, MSAL, Lake Bleu Prime, Luye Phar­ma and Taikang Life chimed in as cor­ner­stone in­vestors.

Digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics announced on Thursday that it’s cutting 35% of its staff as it awaits FDA clearance for its first product.

The company, which launched eight years ago, is one of a growing group of companies seeking a digital alternative to traditional medicine. The space saw a record $7.5 billion in investments in 2021, according to Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma, with uses spanning ADHD, PTSD and other indications. However, private insurers have been slow to hop on board.

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.