Chi­na green­lights sec­ond home­grown PD-1 in 10 days as In­novent cel­e­brates its first drug OK with Eli Lil­ly

You can count on the crowd­ed pool of made-in-Chi­na check­point in­hibitors to rip­ple fast.

Chi­nese reg­u­la­tors have hand­ed an ap­proval to In­novent and its part­ners at Eli Lil­ly for sin­til­imab, just 10 days af­ter Jun­shi scored the his­toric OK for its own home­grown PD-1.

Sin­til­imab is the fourth check­point to be ap­proved in Chi­na and, so far, the on­ly one joint­ly de­vel­oped by a multi­na­tion­al drug­mak­er and a lo­cal biotech (the oth­er two are Mer­ck’s Keytru­da and Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb’s Op­di­vo). Its man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions — a crit­i­cal field in the mar­ket­ing bat­tles to come — is the largest in the coun­try (at three 1000L lines cur­rent­ly) and has passed muster with Lil­ly, CEO Michael Yu told Pharm­Cube in an in­ter­view.

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