Chinese biotech start-up Antengene plans Hong Kong IPO, targeting gaps in treatment of prevalent Asian cancers

Chinese cancer drugs developer Antengene is eyeing a stock market listing in Hong Kong this year to fund the commercial launch in China of a new medicine and further clinical trials partly aimed at plugging a gap in the treatment of cancers particularly prevalent among Asians.

The Shanghai-based company is among dozens of start-ups founded in recent years by mainland Chinese returnees, typically scientists who spent decades in academia and careers in large drug companies in the United States.

They are taking advantage of a rise in unmet demand for newer and more effective drugs for an ageing population in their home country, as well as policy reform that has speeded up clinical trials and approvals, and the allocation of more insurance funds to pay for them.

Cancers with a disproportionally high prevalence among Chinese – such as liver, nasopharynx, stomach, bile duct and certain types of blood cancers – is an area that has attracted them and their backers.

“In the past, more treatments have been developed for diseases with higher prevalence rates in the western world compared to those more common among Asians,” Antengene founder and CEO Jay Mei Jianming said in an interview on the sidelines of a JP Morgan health care conference in San Francisco last week.

“This is changing, as living and health care standards in parts of China and Asia are approaching those in Western nations, more resources are made available.”

A physician by training, Mei is a former executive director of Celgene, which was acquired last year by New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb in the world’s largest pharmaceutical combination.