CK Hutchison’s pharma unit to partner with Eli Lilly on first home-grown colorectal cancer drug in China

A pharmaceutical unit of Li Ka-shing’s conglomerate CK Hutchison is partnered with Eli Lilly, the US drugmaker that helped mass-produce penicillin, to launch the first ever home-grown colorectal cancer drug in China, where rates of the disease are exploding.

If successful, the Shanghai-based drugmaker is poised to become the first domestic player to design and manufacture a medicine that could “significantly extend the lifespan” of patients suffering from the disease in China, officials said.

“It will be the first drug of its type in China. Today they have nothing,”said Christian Hogg, chief executive with Nasdaq-listed Chi-Med in Hong Kong.

So far, the most commonly used drug for colorectal cancer worldwide is Stivarga, developed by German pharmaceutical giant Bayer. But it costs an exorbitant US$14,000(HK$108,701) for a 28-day cycle of treatment every month.

In 2015, more than four million people in China were diagnosed with cancer and nearly three million died from it, according to the American Cancer Journal of Clinicians.