In its first move to spare cer­tain US im­ports from the trade war, Chi­na has of­fered some re­lief to can­cer drug­mak­ers.

Twelve drugs — most­ly chemother­a­py agents — fea­tured on the list of prod­ucts to be ex­empt­ed from re­tal­ia­to­ry tar­iffs un­til Sep­tem­ber 2020. They al­so be­long to the sub­group where tar­iffs al­ready col­lect­ed will be re­turned.

As­traZeneca’s EGFR in­hibitor Ires­sa ap­pears to be the on­ly non-chemo drug in the group. Here’s the list, trans­lat­ed from the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s orig­i­nal an­nounce­ment:

decitabine, flox­uri­dine, cy­clophos­phamide, gefi­tinib, capecitabine, raltitrexed, flu­dara­bine, tega­fur, cy­tara­bine hy­drochlo­ride, gem­c­itabine hy­drochlo­ride, ico­tinib hy­drochlo­ride, ifos­famide

Of­fi­cials told the state-owned Peo­ple Dai­ly that there were three main rea­sons be­hind the ex­emp­tions on these 16 class­es of prod­ucts — in­clud­ing fish feed and lu­bri­cants — which marks the first time the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has done so since the trade war start­ed. It’s been dif­fi­cult to find al­ter­nate sources for these goods, and tar­iffs have been detri­men­tal to both in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies and the re­lat­ed in­dus­tries.

Leon Wang As­traZeneca

While the ex­emp­tions sig­nal good­will from Bei­jing, it’s un­like­ly to have a big im­pact on phar­ma play­ers’ plans in the coun­try as they shift their fo­cus from old drugs near the end of their patent life to in­no­v­a­tive treat­ments, which are get­ting to mar­ket more quick­ly thanks to dra­mat­ic re­forms. Last Au­gust, the reg­u­la­to­ry body, now known as the Na­tion­al Med­ical Prod­ucts Ad­min­is­tra­tion, un­veiled a list of 48 for­eign drugs el­i­gi­ble for pri­or­i­ty re­view.

Days ago, As­traZeneca’s head of in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets Leon Wang said in an in­ter­view with Bloomberg that he ex­pects nov­el ther­a­pies to make up 60% of the com­pa­ny’s Chi­na rev­enue by 2024. The fig­ure was 18% in 2018 by Bloomberg’s count. Mean­while, No­var­tis has a plan to sub­mit 50 new drug ap­provals by 2023.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

The National Institutes of Health has again declined to use so-called “march-in” rights to lower the price of Astellas and Pfizer’s prostate cancer drug Xtandi despite being invented at UCLA with grants from the US Army and NIH.

“Given the remaining patent life and the lengthy administrative process involved for a march-in proceeding, NIH does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug,” NIH told prostate cancer patients Robert Sachs and Clare Love, in a letter shared with Endpoints News. The institutes’ analyses found Xtandi “to be widely available to the public,” an indication that there was not a pressing need for the US to act.