The big C: The deal­mak­ers, dol­lars and dis­eases that have trans­formed the Chi­nese bio­phar­ma mar­ket

For many of Chi­na’s biotech pi­o­neers, li­cens­ing West­ern drugs to de­vel­op and mar­ket specif­i­cal­ly for Chi­nese pa­tients revved up the coun­try’s in­no­va­tion en­gine af­ter decades of be­ing rel­e­gat­ed to gener­ic and API man­u­fac­tur­ing. Even as new star­tups now piv­ot to boast about in-house dis­cov­ery, part­ner­ships with com­pa­nies out­side of Chi­na re­mained in style, cul­mi­nat­ing in a record num­ber of deals in 2019.

Chris Doko­ma­ji­lar

At Deal­For­ma, Chris Doko­ma­ji­lar has been track­ing the li­cens­ing ter­ri­to­ry as well as where the sell­ers and buy­ers are head­quar­tered. Com­pound that with a break­down of the top ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas and tech­nolo­gies of in­ter­est — in ad­di­tion to M&A and ven­ture ac­tiv­i­ty — for Chi­nese play­ers, and you get a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of the boom­ing deal scene.

For a bird’s eye view, since 2008 we’ve seen:

• 682 deals with a Chi­nese com­pa­ny
• $28.2 bil­lion in to­tal deal val­ue
• $3.3 bil­lion in up­front cash & eq­ui­ty
• Plus ad­di­tion­al M&A, as­set pur­chas­es, and in­vest­ments

Zoom in to the do­mes­tic mar­ket on­ly, and you get 518 deals for rights sole­ly in Chi­na, $19.7 bil­lion in to­tal deal val­ue, and $2.9 bil­lion in up­front cash & eq­ui­ty.

Re­mem­ber, all fig­ures — and there are plen­ty here — are based on what com­pa­nies have dis­closed in Eng­lish sources. There are bound to be more deals not cap­tured here, but this is the radar we’re stick­ing to. And fi­nal­ly, there’s no telling what kind of im­pact the cur­rent pan­dem­ic will play on these trends — but they’ve been build­ing for more than a decade now.

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