Your family's cash flow, enough to burn for a few years?

On a cold winter street, Biotechs meet on street corners.

The first sentence of the meeting is not to ask if you have eaten, but: Your family's cash flow, is it enough to burn for a few years?

The chill is intimidating.

This may be the most poignant and ironic "gentle knife" greeting of the year in 2022.

And some, already before the greeting, made a counterattack.

For example, Harbour Medicine.

At noon on November 15, Harbour Pharma announced that it had sold a production plant in Suzhou to WuXi Hyde, a subsidiary of Biologics Biologics, with a total list price of 146 million yuan.

The sale of the factory is obviously one of the winter self-rescue actions of Harbour Pharmaceutical.

The front foot sells the pipeline, the back foot sells the factory, how to save the life of Biotech in the cold winter?

Crazy "fire sale"

Why did Harbour Pharma sell its factory? Everything is already on the horizon.

For a long time, the highly anticipated tenacercept and bartolimab in the market are the most proud works of Harbour Medicine:

• Tenarcept

A global and innovative tumor necrosis factor receptor blocker for adult patients with moderate to severe dry eye.

The molecular engineering of TNF receptor 1 fragment, with a molecular weight of only 19kDa, has been developed into eye drops ophthalmic topical drugs for relieving dry eye symptoms, and has the characteristics of good ocular permeability, strong TNF-α neutralizing activity, high stability, small side effects and high comfort of use.

• Bartolimab

The first novel fully human anti-FcRn monoclonal antibody in Greater China to enter the clinical development stage, which can block the binding of FcRn-IgG to each other and accelerate the clearance of IgG in vivo, thereby effectively treating pathogenic IgG-mediated autoimmune diseases.

The two star products are singing all the way, and the more than 10 billion cake is close at hand, but Harbour Pharma announced news one after another in October this year: Tenaercept announced the termination of the trial with the "trend of insufficient efficacy";

Bartolimab transferred the exclusive interest in the development, manufacture and commercialization of bartolimab in Greater China to CSPC for up to RMB1 billion.

It stands to reason that after the above operation, Harbour Pharma can return more than 1 billion cash flow, which is a sigh of relief.

But the "self-help initiatives" don't stop in October.

On November 11, Harbour Biopharma announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with Moderna to make full use of the company's proprietary fully human heavy-chain antibody platform, HCAb, to research and develop gene immunotherapies.

As a result, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Nona Biologics, will receive a one-off upfront payment of US$6 million, a milestone payment of up to approximately US$500 million and related tiered royalties.

On November 15, Harbour Biopharma once again announced that it would sell a production plant in Suzhou to WuXi Hyde, a subsidiary of Pharma Biologics, for a total list price of 146 million yuan.

So far, after more than two months of crazy "fire sale", billions of yuan of cash of Hebo Pharmaceutical have been properly received.

Switched to CRO

After some capital repatriation operations, what is left in the Hebo pharmaceutical pipeline?

According to the 2022 interim results announcement of Harbour Biopharmaceutical, it is committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative antibody therapies in the field of oncology and immunity, such as the proprietary antibody technology platform Harbour Mice®, and its pipeline layout is as follows:

Heplatin Pharma Pipeline

Image source: Juchao Network Enterprise Announcement

Nowadays, tenacercept and bartolimab have "folded their wings", and the remaining pipeline products are only in the second and first phases of research, making the road to monetization more difficult.

Under this circumstance, Harbour Biopharma announced the transfer of the "front" and the establishment of a new CRO company, Nona Biologics.

According to Harbour Platinum Medical Officer Weiwei, Nona Biotech uses the existing Harbour Mice® fully human antibody transgenic mouse platform and the new generation of self-developed immune cell adaptor dual antibody platform HBICE®, giving full play to its unique advantages and rich experience in research and development in antibody-related fields, and providing partners with complete preclinical drug development services from discovery to clinical research approval (I to ITM, Idea to IND) with innovative business models.

Left-handed Biotech, right-handed preclinical CRO, and platinum began a new journey.

How did Biotech survive this winter?

In the second harsh winter, Harbour Biotech is no longer the first self-help Biotech.

Just a few days ago, CStone's decision was equally emotional:

The Suzhou industrialization base was temporarily suspended on November 4, 2022, mainly due to "considering that there is no clear plan for mass production at present" and "reducing the company's operating costs".

Since the arrival of the capital winter in the second half of 2021, whether it is the crazy "fire sale" of Harbour Pharmaceutical, or the shutdown of CStone Pharmaceutical's Suzhou factory, this means that how to have stable cash flow and actively survive has become the consensus of Biotech.

How to survive the second winter?

• "Selling seedlings"

In the eyes of most people, selling young seedlings is a corporate embarrassment and a last resort. The author believes that instead of delaying the development process of the product pipeline, it is better to let the most suitable and matching resources,

To nourish and grow the seedlings to harvest the fruits of autumn is a kind of "completion".

• "Chop the factory"

Cut the mechanism, cut the factory, and cut the mess quickly; However, throttling should be made into a long-term planning strategy of the enterprise and a slimming exercise for all employees.

• transformation

Under the cruel market competition, how to optimize the allocation of existing resources and release the value of resources will become one of the important agenda of Biotech in the future.

brief summary

For a long time, the mushrooming domestic Biotech has represented to a certain extent that China's biomedicine has reached a certain level.

In the post-winter era of capital, how to find the self that was once full of spirit and break through again? Chinese Biotech Corps, come on.