China's YishengBio chronicles comeback story in Hong Kong IPO while plotting big moves in infectious diseases, cancer
It can be tough to be a vaccine developer in China.
YishengBio shed some light on the regulatory hoops and hurdles it had to jump through since launching its first rabies vaccine in 2003 — and the grand plans it has for the global pipeline in infectious diseases and cancer — in an IPO filing on the HKEX.
The 2014 dispute that founder and chairman Zhang Yi got into with the Chinese FDA, for instance, turned out to have cost a lot more than just a few vaccine batches that didn’t get released. While the company said it had voluntarily halted manufacturing activities, reported the contamination and began a review of the facilities, the regulators performed an inspection and suspended the GMP license for a couple of months while also blocking release of 117 other lots of the YSJA rabies vaccine. Attempts to take the then-CFDA to court ended in vain.
Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.
You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.