Yifan Pharma’s unit, eyeing US$5.5 billion post-chemotherapy treatment market dominated by Amgen, considers IPO in 2021
- Evive’s F-627 candidate has shown promising results after several phase three clinical trials, CEO Liu Jubo says
- Amgen’s second best-seller Neulasta, whose patent expired five years ago, generated US$3.2 billion of sales in 2019
In the process, the innovative drugs developer is hoping to become the first Chinese company to win regulatory approval to sell a novel biological drug in the US market, chief executive Liu Jubo said in an interview.
Biological drugs, also known as large molecule drugs, are derived from living organisms. Evive has so far conducted 10 clinical trials on 1,200 breast cancer patients in China, Europe and the US, showing its F-627 candidate drug to be “at least as efficacious and safe” as Amgen’s Neulasta.
“For the biological sector, we are pretty confident [on this candidate],” Liu said. “No other drug has completed phase three trials so far, we do not see a close catch-up player from China that will do the same thing in the near future.”
Hangzhou-based Yifan, one of the world’s largest vitamin B5 makers, paid 1 billion yuan (US$147.8 million) for a 62.3 per cent stake in Evive in 2016, a Singapore-based company founded by mainland Chinese scientists.