Week In Review: Henlius Out-Licenses Southeast Asia Rights For PD-1 Candidate In $692 Million Deal

Deals and Financings

• Shanghai Henlius Biotech announced a $692 million partnership with Kalbe Genexine Biologics for Southeast Asian rights to Henlius' PD-1 candidate;
• Blue Sail Medical of Shandong will pay $160 million to acquire New Valve Technology, a Swiss maker of minimally invasive heart valve replacements;
• Qihan Biotech of Hangzhou added $5.5 million to its Series A funding to advance its use of CRISPR Cas-9 gene editing for xenotransplantation;
• Guanhao Biotech of Guangzhou will pay $3.1 million to acquire a 31% stake in ZY Therapeutics, a North Carolina drug delivery company;
• Changmugu, a Beijing AI-based orthopedics company, completed a $3 million Pre-A round for its joint replacement surgery planning system;
• China National Biotec, a Sinopharm subsidiary, invested in Boston's Advanced Aesthetic Technologies and acquired China rights to its aesthetic gel implant;
• Xi 'an Zhentai Intelligent Technology completed an angel funding round to develop its rehabilitation robot that includes a brain-computer interface;
• Simcere, a Nanjing pharma, in-licensed greater China rights to a treatment for gout from JW Pharmaceutical of Korea;
• Nanjing Frontier Bio will collaborate with Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO) to develop a novel treatment for HIV;

Trials and Approvals

• I-Mab, a China-US clinical-stage biopharma, will collaborate with MSD/Merck to test a combination of I-Mab's anti-CD47 mAb and MSD's PD-1, Keytruda;
• Shanghai's Carsgen Therapeutics received Priority Medicine status in the EU for its anti-BCMA CAR-T cell therapy for myeloma;
• CStone Pharma of Suzhou reported positive early results from a China trial of its PD-L1 candidate in solid tumors.