AstraZeneca enlists an upstart China biotech partner in the wake of an R&D setback

One of the newly created biotech upstarts in China has tied up with a Big Pharma backer on a discovery deal targeted at hypercholesterolemia and metabolics.

Bioregnum Opinion Column by John Carroll

The China biotech is Cholesgen, and it’s unlikely you’ve ever heard much about it.

The fledgling biotech booted up with its $14 million launch round pieced together in early 2021 from a broad syndicate that included AZ-CICC, AstraZeneca’s $1 billion investment fund created four years ago as the pharma giant looked to grow its Shanghai R&D ops and partner up with a new generation of discovery groups taking root in the giant Chinese market.

Not surprisingly, AstraZeneca is now following up with a discovery alliance with Cholesgen, which boasts a pair of scientific leaders with notable resumes: Qi Wei, a scientific advisor on the faculty at ShanghaiTech, and Song Baoliang, a professor at Wuhan University who’s specialized in cholesterol and metabolics.

What you don’t get from the PR sent ahead for an early look is any idea of exactly what numbers are involved, though typically deals like this — preclinical, aimed at identifying new drug programs — start with a relatively small upfront and lots of biobucks in the back end.

For AstraZeneca, the new alliance follows its other ups and downs in the cholesterol field, which falls under the purview of Mene Pangalos. AstraZeneca killed a mid-stage PCSK9 drug program in-licensed from Ionis — AZD8233 — last fall after investors had a chance to ponder some lackluster Phase IIb results. The data were positive but not competitive with what’s already on the market.

Cholesgen will now tackle the challenge of besting the current standard of care as AstraZeneca digs in. Longtime AstraZeneca vet Pangalos is well-known for his penchant to stubbornly work through setbacks and stay focused on a bigger prize, and the pharma giant overall has been given enormous credit for its successes in oncology, with several blockbuster franchises that have helped CEO Pascal Soriot engineer a turnaround.

Soriot has also doubled down on the Chinese market in general, pursuing an aggressive sales strategy while the pharma giant, joining other major players like Roche, has been lining up alliances with a new generation of drug developers. For years the country was seen as a great place to outlicense drugs marketed in the US, but increasingly it’s been seen as a source of scientific innovation as startups and some more established players like Hutchmed advance novel therapeutics.

Soriot recently returned from a trip to China, telling the Financial Times‘ Hannah Kuchler that the Asian market is wide open to pharma players worldwide.

“Three business development deals and more to come. And we definitely could make acquisitions. There is no limitation to this,” he enthused.

That’s something that a long lineup of China’s top biotech execs see as a prime example of the new reality in the world’s number two economy, as the communist government keeps a tight lid on prices, pushing the country’s biotechs into the global development of new therapies.

A group of us covered that in a panel I moderated last week during our Boston biotech summit, which you can see here.

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