China is key market for Singaporean biotech start-up’s stomach cancer early diagnosis kit

Name: ‘It did nothing to cure my illness’: Filipino patient falls victim to fake cancer cures online
Uploaded: 2024-05-19T03:30:19.000Z
Duration: 3 min 29 s
Description: ‘It did nothing to cure my illness’: Filipino patient falls victim to fake cancer cures online

Mirxes has refiled for a Hong Kong IPO with the target of raising at least US$100 million for a valuation expected to reach around US$800 million.

‘The China market is crucial as it will give us the initial scale to bring down the cost,’ says CEO and co-founder

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China currently accounts for around 20 per cent of Mirxes’ revenue as the company is still awaiting regulatory approval and has limited business activities there, says Zhou Lihan, co-founder and CEO. Photo: SCMP Handout

Meredith Chen

Published: 11:30am, 19 May 2024Updated: 4:20pm, 20 May 2024

Mainland China will become the largest single market for Singaporean diagnostics start-up Mirxes’ core product, a stomach cancer detection kit that was key to the company’s development, according to Zhou Lihan, its CEO and co-founder.

The biotechnology firm, which launched the world’s first molecular diagnostic kit for early detection of gastric cancer in 2019, refiled its draft prospectus for a Hong Kong initial public offering in April with the target of raising at least US$100 million for a valuation expected to reach around US$800 million.

Mirxes first applied to list on the city’s stock exchange in July last year but later scrapped the plan.

The end of 2023 was “a very volatile period” because of factors such as the China property market crisis and the war in Gaza, and “we felt it wasn’t quite the right time” to move forward, Zhou said.

According to the latest prospectus, the company’s revenue grew 36.2 per cent year on year to US$24.2 million in 2023, while it made a net loss of US$69.6 million, 23.8 per cent bigger than its loss the previous year.

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‘It did nothing to cure my illness’: Filipino patient falls victim to fake cancer cures online

China currently accounts for around 20 per cent of Mirxes’ revenue as the company is still awaiting regulatory approval and has limited business activities there. However, Zhou expects China’s proportion of total revenue to double after GastroClear’s expected launch there in the final quarter of this year.