Konstantin Poukalov

Per­cep­tive re­cruits A-list in­vestors to back its in-house Chi­na start­up with a mam­moth $310M raise

It took two years for Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors to con­ceive and boot up Lian­Bio, its big bet on a new kind of in-li­cens­ing mod­el for Chi­na, seed­ing it with enough cash to set up two an­chor­ing deals with MyoKar­dia and Bridge­Bio. The re­sult was a start­up that was all ready to go, reap­ing $310 mil­lion just a lit­tle over two months af­ter of­fi­cial launch.

Home­grown Chi­nese biotechs — many of them boast­ing of US ties and ex­ecs with over­seas cre­den­tials — have been rak­ing in mega-ven­ture rounds in 2020, both from in­flu­en­tial lo­cal back­ers and over­seas VC firms that have been load­ing up new cash. As with IPOs, the deal flow might be slow­er but the amounts are of­ten more stag­ger­ing. Lian­Bio’s lat­est round, un­usu­al­ly, is brand­ed both a Se­ries A and crossover.

The raise brings in much-need­ed cap­i­tal to add more drugs to the port­fo­lio and set them up for ap­proval in Chi­na, said Kon­stan­tin Poukalov, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Per­cep­tive. But it’s not just about the mon­ey.

“We’ve been form­ing syn­di­cates as part of our day job for many many years now,” said Poukalov, who’s al­so Lian’s ex­ec­u­tive chair­man. “When we set out on this process, we had a very tar­get­ed list of in­vestors who we want­ed to in­tro­duce the Lian sto­ry to.”

Bing Li

All in­vestors in the round came out of that ini­tial small list: RA Cap­i­tal and Ven­rock co-led the round with Chi­nese in­vestor CMG-SDIC Cap­i­tal. Black­Rock, Cas­din Cap­i­tal, Far­al­lon, Lo­gos Cap­i­tal, Pfiz­er, Sphera Health­care, T. Rowe Price As­so­ci­ates, Ty­bourne Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, Vi­da Ven­tures, Viking Glob­al In­vestors and Welling­ton Man­age­ment al­so chimed in.

Most of these are like-mind­ed, knowl­edge­able in­vestors that can com­ple­ment Per­cep­tive’s own biotech net­work and con­nect Lian­Bio to po­ten­tial new part­ners, Poukalov not­ed. There are al­so in­vestors from Asia who can help with ex­e­cu­tion on the ground.

In re­turn, Per­cep­tive pitched an op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­lock Chi­na — a boom­ing mar­ket that “no qual­i­ty com­pa­ny should re­al­ly ig­nore” — as a key part of any glob­al drug de­vel­op­ment pro­gram.

“In-li­cens­ing pro­grams is on­ly the first step,” Poukalov said. “We want to have world-class ex­per­tise with re­spect to ex­e­cu­tion, de­vel­op­ment, reg­u­la­to­ry and even com­mer­cial­iza­tion in Chi­na.”

De­bra Yu

Since Au­gust the team has al­ready grown from 30 to 40, with CEO Bing Li lead­ing the bulk of them in Shang­hai and pres­i­dent/CBO De­bra Yu head­ing up the lean Prince­ton of­fice, which is fo­cused on busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and al­liance man­age­ment while keep­ing an eye on com­pli­ance and lo­gis­tics.

Aside from the on­col­o­gy and car­dio­vas­cu­lar as­sets they’ve al­ready se­cured, Lian is work­ing on a num­ber of new trans­ac­tions in the in­flam­ma­to­ry, au­toim­mune, neu­rol­o­gy, oph­thal­mol­o­gy, and po­ten­tial­ly rare dis­ease space.

Old­er com­pa­nies that adopt a sim­i­lar li­cens­ing mod­el, from Zai Lab and Ever­est to CAN­bridge, may al­ready be tap­ping in­to some of those ar­eas. Lian­Bio be­lieves it is more am­bi­tious in the breadth of its en­vi­sioned pipeline.

Poukalov added that the com­pa­ny plans to dou­ble in size in the next year or two while it dras­ti­cal­ly scales up the pipeline.

Achiev­ing Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion: Un­lock­ing Cost Re­duc­tion, Clin­i­cal Ex­cel­lence & Pre­ci­sion Ther­a­peu­tics Man­u­fac­tur­ing

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End­points 20(+2) un­der 40, 2023; Bio­phar­ma's high­est-paid CEOs; N-of-1 CRISPR sto­ry goes on af­ter tragedy; and more

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

We will be off Monday in observance of Memorial Day — and when we get back, it will be a straight march to ASCO, BIO and more. Enjoy the (long) weekend!

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Athena Countouriotis, Avenzo Therapeutics CEO (website via Nasdaq)

Ex-Turn­ing Point ex­ecs plan to have their next bet, Aven­zo, on the Nas­daq next sum­mer

The crew at Turning Point Therapeutics is back together for a new biotech that wants to acquire early-stage oncology small molecules, including antibody drug conjugates, and potentially form partnerships with China-based drug developers for ex-China rights as it eyes a speedy leap onto the Nasdaq around this time next year, CEO Athena Countouriotis told Endpoints News.

After selling Turning Point to Bristol Myers Squibb, announced at the onset of last year’s ASCO confab, she and colleague Mohammad Hirmand founded Avenzo Therapeutics. The CEO and CMO already have approximately $200 million in seed and Series A financing from five big-name investors to evaluate which drugs to bring into its pipeline. That includes SR One, OrbiMed, Foresite Capital, Citadel’s Surveyor Capital and Lilly Asia Ventures. Bidding wars for assets have led Avenzo to miss out on some deals in recent months, but the biotech has three active term sheets and hopes to bring in its first asset in the third quarter, Countouriotis said in a Friday morning interview.

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Rich Horgan (R) with his late brother, Terry

Rich Hor­gan spear­head­ed a gene ther­a­py for his broth­er. The tri­al end­ed in tragedy, but the work con­tin­ues for more pa­tients

Rich Horgan’s quest to create a custom gene therapy for his brother, Terry, ended in tragedy. But Horgan doesn’t believe it’s the end of the story.

Terry, a 27-year-old patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last October just eight days after receiving the therapy in a clinical trial in which he was the only participant. The case raised questions about the safety of certain gene therapies and what would happen to other drug programs under a nonprofit that Horgan created, called Cure Rare Disease.

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Bio­phar­ma's 20 high­est-paid CEOs of 2022, each bring­ing in $20M+ pay­days

Even in a down year for much of the biopharma market, 20 CEOs brought in pay packages valued at more than $20 million, an Endpoints News analysis found.

Endpoints collected data on more than 350 CEO compensation packages, covering a wide range of pharma, biotech, and life sciences companies. All told, the 20 largest earners made over $725 million in 2022 — an average package of $36.4 million. Three brought in paydays over $50 million, and one CEO broke the $100 million mark.

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Douglas Love, Annexon CEO

An­nex­on’s GA drug miss­es on pri­ma­ry goal but win on vi­su­al acu­ity will be fo­cus of planned late-stage tri­al

Annexon’s complement inhibitor didn’t prove better than sham at reducing lesion growth in a leading cause of blindness, but the biotech still plans to move forward on the back of secondary endpoints showing visual acuity preservation, which will “certainly” be the primary goal in a late-stage trial to be discussed shortly with the FDA, CEO Douglas Love told Endpoints News. 

The California biotech’s ANX007 was not statistically significant compared to pooled sham, the comparator, at 12 months in patients with geographic atrophy, per a Wednesday presentation. In every-month dosing, the GA lesion area changed about 6.2% from baseline (p=0.526) and 1.3% (p=0.896) in the every-other-month group. In a March note, Jefferies analyst Suji Jeong said a reduction of 20% to 30% would be “encouraging.”

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The 20(+2) un­der 40: Your guide to the next gen­er­a­tion of biotech lead­ers

This year’s list of 20 biotech leaders under the age of 40 includes a huge range of ambitions. Some of our honorees are planning to create the next big drug giant. Others are pushing the bounds of AI. One is working to revolutionize TB testing. All are compelling talents who are still young in age, but already far along in achievement.

And, as in years past, we went over. The 20 are actually 22 because of two double profiles that reflect how important teamwork is in the industry. As one of our honorees, Joe Illingworth of DJS Antibodies, told me in our interview, “It takes a village to raise a biotech.”

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FDA ap­proves Lex­i­con’s heart-fail­ure drug af­ter de­feat in di­a­betes

The FDA on Friday approved Lexicon’s heart failure drug sotagliflozin following a string of setbacks for the pharma company, including an FDA rejection in diabetes and the loss of a development deal with Sanofi.

The dual SGLT1 and SGLT2 inhibitor will be marketed as Inpefa and is a once-daily tablet. It’s been approved to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure-related hospitalization or urgent visits in adults with heart failure or type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and other cardiovascular risk factors. The label spans the range of left ventricular ejection fraction, including preserved ejection fraction and reduced ejection fraction, as well as patients with or without diabetes, Lexicon said Friday.

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Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion to re­ceive few­er Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine dos­es un­der amend­ed con­tract

The European Commission has made a few changes to its vaccine contract with Pfizer and BioNTech, reducing the dose volume while extending the delivery timeline to cope with “evolving public health needs.”

The Commission previously struck a contract in May 2021 for 900 million doses, with the option to purchase another 900 million. Of those, 450 million were expected to be delivered in 2023, though an amendment now calls for fewer doses. While neither the Commission nor Pfizer and BioNTech have revealed an exact amount, an unnamed source told Reuters that the amendment reduces the remaining expected doses by about a third.

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