Fol­low­ing the suit of As­traZeneca last Feb­ru­ary, Boehringer In­gel­heim will team up with a lead­ing R&D hub in Hong Kong to seed biotechs.

Where­as As­traZeneca fo­cused on can­cer drugs and di­ag­nos­tics, the Ger­man gi­ant will work with Hong Kong Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Parks on in­cu­bat­ing in­fec­tious dis­ease and im­munol­o­gy drug de­vel­op­ers.

HK­STP and Boehringer, through its ven­ture arm, will sup­port the up­starts with up to $6 mil­lion HK (about $600,000 USD) each to bankroll ear­ly-stage op­er­a­tions and clin­i­cal tri­als, said Grace Lau, head of HK­STP’s in­sti­tute for trans­la­tion­al re­search, in a state­ment.

The fo­cus is on ear­ly-stage star­tups and uni­ver­si­ty spin­offs that are en­ter­ing the R&D stage. Lo­cal and glob­al star­tups are able to ap­ply.

The Hong Kong part­ner will pro­vide busi­ness de­vel­op­ment ex­per­tise, men­tor­ship and in­vest­ment ini­tia­tives, such as help­ing with fi­nan­cial sub­si­dies and up­front grants. The group will al­so lend guid­ance on com­mer­cial­iza­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, scal­ing-up and mar­ket­ing strate­gies.

Boehringer will lend in­vest­ment in­sight and pro­vide ac­cess to its fund­ing net­work.

The pair kept de­tails slim on the length of the part­ner­ship and how many biotechs they look to build. More than 150 biotechs are al­ready part of HK­STP, the group says, which is a three­fold in­crease in the past five years. The rapid rise is part of the gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment in­to bio­med­ical tech­nol­o­gy with the in­fu­sion of $10 bil­lion HK ($1.27 bil­lion USD) ded­i­cat­ed to­ward life and health tech.

The rise has been so strong that HK­STP CEO Al­bert Wong claims Hong Kong is the world’s sec­ond largest fundrais­ing hub for biotech, ce­ment­ing its mark as the largest in Asia.

“Now we’re thrilled to see that the bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try is pick­ing up rapid­ly in the Guang­dong–Hong Kong–Macau Greater Bay Area, it’s a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to part­ner with HK­STP to de­vel­op the lo­cal ecosys­tem, and fur­ther en­hance Chi­na’s dual-cir­cu­la­tion scheme,” Boehringer Chi­na CEO and pres­i­dent Fe­lix Gutsche said in a state­ment. “We hope to of­fer our con­tin­u­ous sup­port to more home-grown in­no­va­tions to be rec­og­nized on the glob­al mar­ket and even­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit the pa­tients world­wide.”

Fledg­ling biotechs in­volved in the pro­gram can al­so tap in­to HK­STP’s 11,000-re­searcher tal­ent pool.

Lonza has been expanding its reach across the globe, bringing sites in China and the US online this year, but now they are looking closer to home for their next major investment.

The Swiss manufacturer on Friday announced plans to construct a large-scale commercial drug fill and finish facility in the town of Stein, Switzerland. The new facility will be delivered through an investment of approximately CHF 500 million, or $519 million, and is expected to be completed in 2026. The facility will also be constructed on the same campus as Lonza’s current clinical drug product facility.

Two weeks ago, Biohaven hit an all-time high in weekly Nurtec prescriptions. CEO Vlad Coric attributes at least some of that success to a new interactive Twitter campaign that encourages patients to free their feed of potential migraine triggers.

Earlier this month, Biohaven in partnership with Twitter launched the #RelieveYourFeed campaign that allows users to customize their app settings based on their migraine triggers.

Over the past few months, oncologists have been talking a lot about the ASCO conference. Not surprising considering its import and the study data presented, but what may be less expected is the second most talked about topic of health equity.

That’s according to data from The Harris Poll and the new expert network the researcher is building out. While the company has been doing deep data dives into specific health issues or conditions for pharma clients, it’s now monitoring influencer networks of therapy area specialists to find out what experts are really thinking about.