One of Chi­na’s biggest up-and-com­ers has a brand new part­ner, and it’s one whose back­ers are like­ly fa­mil­iar with the oth­er’s.

Per­cep­tive’s Lian­Bio has se­cured a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lan­dos Bio­phar­ma, the lead com­pa­ny in Chris Garabe­di­an’s Xon­toge­ny fund, to de­vel­op and mar­ket two pro­grams in Greater Chi­na and oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, the biotechs an­nounced Mon­day morn­ing. In ex­change, Lan­dos is get­ting an up­front pay­ment of $18 mil­lion, up to $200 mil­lion in mile­stones and roy­al­ties on sales in the li­censed ter­ri­to­ries.

In ad­di­tion to Chi­na, Macau, Hong Kong and Tai­wan, Lian­Bio will be able to ex­clu­sive­ly mar­ket these two can­di­dates in South Ko­rea, Sin­ga­pore, Thai­land, Viet­nam, Myan­mar, Cam­bo­dia, In­done­sia and the Philip­pines.

Found­ed just nine months ago, Lian­Bio has been busy ever since it was birthed by Per­cep­tive in or­der for the VC firm to gain a foothold in a grow­ing area. The biotech has gone full steam ahead with its in-li­cens­ing busi­ness mod­el, part­ner­ing with sev­er­al biotechs to po­ten­tial­ly bring promis­ing late-stage as­sets to the Chi­nese and Asian mar­ket­places.

Lan­dos is the sixth biotech with which Lian­Bio has part­nered so far, join­ing a sta­ble of Per­cep­tive com­pa­nies that have al­ready part­nered with the Chi­na play­er, in­clud­ing found­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors MyoKar­dia and Bridge­Bio. The two pro­grams in ques­tion will be the sev­enth and eighth in Lian­Bio’s pipeline. These can­di­dates, known as omi­lan­cor (for­mer­ly BT-11) and NX-13, would al­so mark Lian­Bio’s first for­ay in­to the IBD area.

Lian­Bio al­so saw sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment from Pfiz­er, which was the on­ly Big Phar­ma to join its $310 mil­lion Se­ries A last Au­gust. Pfiz­er fur­ther chipped in an­oth­er $70 mil­lion last No­vem­ber to in-li­cense pro­grams that they can then co-de­vel­op, putting them first in line to ne­go­ti­ate for stand­alone com­mer­cial deals.

Their busi­ness mod­el is one that has im­pressed Lan­dos CEO Josep Bas­saganya-Ri­era thus far, he told End­points News. Ever since Chi­na adopt­ed the ICH guide­lines in 2017, al­low­ing the coun­try to ex­pand its list of ap­proved drugs from main­ly gener­ics, more and more com­pa­nies have been clam­or­ing to break in­to the world’s biggest mar­ket. As Lan­dos ap­proach­es the lat­er stages of its two lead pro­grams, the part­ner­ship proved a nat­ur­al fit, Bas­saganya-Ri­era said.

“By us­ing this mod­el, there’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Lian­Bio to be­come a plat­form that brings the next wave of in­no­va­tion in­to Chi­na,” he told End­points. “Lian­Bio can be a true chan­nel, bring­ing in­no­va­tion from the US and oth­er parts of the world to those pa­tients that need those drugs in Asia and Chi­na in par­tic­u­lar.”

Omi­lan­cor is a LAN­CL2 ag­o­nist be­ing de­vel­oped to treat ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis, Crohn’s dis­ease and eosinophilic esophagi­tis, and Lan­dos is ex­pect­ing to meet with the FDA by the end of June to fi­nal­ize its glob­al Phase III tri­al pro­to­col, Bas­saganya-Ri­era said. The cur­rent plan is to have Lian­Bio han­dle re­cruit­ment and have the nec­es­sary “boots on the ground” when ap­proach­ing reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties in the li­censed coun­tries, he added.

It’s a pro­gram that no­tably missed sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance in its Phase II tri­al for mild to mod­er­ate UC, though re­searchers said they saw a “pos­i­tive trend” at the time. The ab­solute clin­i­cal re­mis­sion end­point for two dos­es com­pared to place­bo post­ed rates of 31.8%, 30.3% and 22.7%, re­spec­tive­ly, amount­ing to dis­ap­point­ing p-val­ues of p=0.340 and p=0.235.

But the re­sult­ing place­bo-ad­just­ed clin­i­cal re­mis­sion rates of 9.1% and 7.6% were con­sis­tent with stan­dard of care treat­ments for even se­vere UC, prompt­ing the com­pa­ny to go ahead with its Phase III. Lan­dos al­so dosed its first pa­tient for a Phase II Crohn’s dis­ease tri­al ear­li­er this month.

The oth­er can­di­date in the deal, NX-13, is an NL­RX1 tar­get­ing com­pound in de­vel­op­ment for the treat­ment of UC and Crohn’s. It’s cur­rent­ly in Phase Ib de­vel­op­ment where three dos­es are be­ing test­ed in 40 UC pa­tients, Bas­saganya-Ri­era said. The plan is to start a Phase II po­ten­tial­ly as soon as next year.

A group of drug regulators from Australia, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK on Tuesday unveiled their strategic plans for the next three years, laying out how they’ll work together on reviewing new drugs to reduce duplication across borders.

While understanding that the biopharma industry is truly global, the group, known collectively as the Access Consortium, seeks to better align their respective regulatory and policy approaches for pharmaceuticals, with an aim to facilitate faster access to high quality, safe and effective health products.

Endpoints News turned five years old over the weekend. I wanted to mark the happy occasion by extending our deepest gratitude to Endpoints’ premium subscribers while outlining several other ways to support us as we go broader and get bigger this year and beyond.

Same as any business, we’ve got to create value and get paid for delivering it. So if you depend on Endpoints to stay abreast on biopharma developments, we depend on you too.

As the Biden administration tries to wrangle the details of its infrastructure bill, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) took a concrete step forward on drug pricing reforms on Tuesday and unveiled five principles for such reforms, including providing Medicare with the ability to negotiate prices.

“Allowing the Secretary of HHS to negotiate the price Medicare will pay creates a much needed mechanism to achieve fairer prices when the market has failed to do so,” Wyden wrote.

Two years after Phase I data generated promise for bentracimab as the first drug to stop bleeding in patients that were prescribed AstraZeneca’s much-hyped stroke and heart attack drug Brilinta, PhaseBio has licensed it out to a European partner.

PhaseBio sold European rights for the uncontrolled bleeding monoclonal antibody to Italian biotech Alfasigma. That company will market the drug in 49 countries across Europe and other markets, PhaseBio said in a press release.