Al­pham­ab On­col­o­gy rounds out HKEX's sec­ond biotech IPO year with $230M raise and high lo­cal in­ter­est

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.

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

Clay Siegall, Morphimmune CEO

Up­dat­ed: Ex-Seagen chief Clay Sie­gall emerges as CEO of pri­vate biotech

Clay Siegall will be back in the CEO seat, taking the helm of a private startup working on targeted cancer therapies.

It’s been almost a year since Siegall resigned from Seagen, the biotech he co-founded and led for more than 20 years, in the wake of domestic violence allegations by his then-wife. His eventual successor, David Epstein, sold the company to Pfizer in a $43 billion deal unveiled last week.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Zhi Hong, Brii Biosciences CEO

Brii Bio­sciences stops man­u­fac­tur­ing Covid-19 an­ti­body com­bo, plans to with­draw EUA re­quest

Brii Biosciences said it will stop manufacturing its Covid-19 antibody combination, sold in China, and is working to withdraw its emergency use authorization request in the US, which it started in October 2021.

The Beijing and North Carolina biotech commercially launched the treatment in China last July but is now axing the work and reverting resources to other “high-priority programs,” per a Friday update. The focus now is namely hepatitis B viral infection, postpartum depression and major depressive disorders.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

No­vo Nordisk oral semaglu­tide tri­al shows re­duc­tion in blood sug­ar, plus weight loss

Novo Nordisk is testing higher levels of its oral version of its GLP-1, semaglutide, and its type 2 diabetes trial results released today show reductions in blood sugar as well as weight loss.

In the Phase IIIb trial, Novo compared its oral semaglutide in 25 mg and 50 mg doses with the 14 mg version that’s currently the maximum approved dose. The trial looked at how the doses compared when added to a stable dose of one to three oral antidiabetic medicines in people with type 2 diabetes who were in need of an intensified treatment.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Ly­me vac­cine test com­ple­tion is pushed back by a year as Pfiz­er, Val­ne­va say they'll ad­just tri­al

Valneva and Pfizer have adjusted the end date for the Phase III study of their investigational Lyme disease vaccine, pushing it back by a year after issues at a contract researcher led to thousands of US patients being dropped from the test.

In a March 20 update to clinicaltrials.gov, Valneva and Pfizer moved the primary completion date on the trial, called VALOR, from the end of 2024 to the end of 2025.

Endpoints Premium

Premium subscription required

Unlock this article along with other benefits by subscribing to one of our paid plans.

Stuart Peltz, former PTC Therapeutics CEO

Stu­art Peltz re­signs as PTC Ther­a­peu­tics CEO af­ter 25 years

Stuart Peltz, the longtime CEO of PTC Therapeutics who’s led the rare disease drug developer since its founding 25 years ago, is stepping down.

Succeeding him in the top job is Matthew Klein, who joined PTC in 2019 and was promoted to chief operating officer in 2022. In a call with analysts, he said the CEO transition has been planned for “quite some time” — in fact, as part of it, he gave the company’s presentation at the JP Morgan healthcare conference earlier this year.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Bet­ter Ther­a­peu­tics cuts 35% of staff while await­ing dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic ap­proval

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.

FDA spells out how can­cer drug de­vel­op­ers can use one tri­al for both ac­cel­er­at­ed and full ap­provals

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.

FDA ad­vi­sors unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval for Bio­gen's ALS drug

A panel of outside advisors to the FDA unanimously recommended that the agency grant accelerated approval to Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen despite the drug failing the primary goal of its Phase III study, an endorsement that could pave a path forward for the treatment.

By a 9-0 vote, members of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee said there was sufficient evidence that tofersen’s effect on a certain protein associated with ALS is reasonably likely to predict a benefit for patients. But panelists stopped short of advocating for a full approval, voting 3-5 against (with one abstention) and largely citing the failed pivotal study.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.