HR Bio Holdings, a joint venture between pharmaceutical company Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine (JHM) and an undisclosed “blue chip” investment firm, invested $100m yesterday to launch a US-based cancer therapy startup called Hengrui Therapeutics (HTI).
Publicly-listed JHM bills itself as China’s largest ethical pharmaceutical company and operates across the areas of oncology, endocrinology, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, surgical products and imaging agents.
HTI will look to develop and commercialise cancer treatments and will use the funding to support clinical trials for candidates sourced from a drug pipeline of several clinical-stage oncology and immuno-oncology assets.
Piaoyang Sun, JHM’s chairman, will take the same role at HTI. He said: “We are pleased to see the US investment into HTI from our joint venture. It is an important step in our global development strategy.
“We believe this level of capital funding will enable swift build-up of HTI’s infrastructure, thus adequately support the execution of its development projects in the US and the rest of the world.”