Tag Archives: china

Hot Investor Mandate 4: USA and China-Based Biotech Company Seeks to Invest in Life Science Companies, with Focus on Cell/Gene Therapies, Antibodies, Synthetic Biology, etc.

5 Apr

A public biotech company with headquarters in USA and China is actively seeking for investment, partnering and acquisition opportunities to expand the company’s business in multiple areas. The firm usually invests as a strategic investor in as early as seed rounds. Typical allocations are $1-5 M.

The firm’s sectors of focus are cell and gene therapies, antibody therapeutics, life science tools, drug discovery technologies, synthetic biology technologies and industrial enzyme products.

The firm may seek a board seat depending upon size of investment. The firm is open to working with all stages of management teams and may lead or co-invest.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com.

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Hot Investor 1: VC/PE Investment Firm Backed by China and Taiwan Companies Invests Broadly Across Seed and Post-Seed Stage Life Science Companies

22 Mar

A venture capital and private equity firm based in Cambridge, MA provides seed capital out of an angel group subsidiary within the firm, and also provides equity to later stage IT (robotics, AI, IoT, new materials, FinTech, etc.) and healthcare companies. The firm is backed by five public pharmaceutical companies and ten public IT and healthcare companies from Taiwan and China. The angel group subsidiary provides up to $2M seed stage investments in early-stage companies, while the parent firm provides equity of $2M – $5M per company post seed stage. The firm is also actively looking for PE and M&A opportunities worldwide in the $1B ~ 5B range. The firm seeks companies on a global level, though has a focus in Boston and North America East Coast-based companies.

Within healthcare, the firm is interested in biotech therapeutics, medical devices, healthcare IT and digital health. The firm is opportunistic in subsector and indication and has a specific interest in oncology products. For healthcare IT, the firm is interested in software, AI, robotics, and digital health technology that seeks to integrate into hospital systems. For medical devices, the firm is interested in drug delivery system devices that require a therapeutic component. The firm typically seeks companies that already have CE Mark, FDA, CFDA, or TFDA approval.

The firm requires the management team to have technical expertise in their field of study, and prefers companies that also have business development expertise. The firm typically takes a board seat after an investment, but at the minimum will maintain a close relationship with the entrepreneur as a support and advisor. The firm typically participates in two financing rounds per company, and also supports the company in finding add-on investors for the following round.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com.

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Hot Investor Mandate 2: Chinese Government Partnered VC Firm Invests in Therapeutics and Clinical Testing Companies, with Focus on China Angle

15 Mar

A venture capital firm partnered with the Chinese Government was founded in 2016, and focuses on cross-border investments. When investing, the firm doesn’t only provide financial capital, they also provide their global consulting services focused specifically on helping companies work across borders and in China. With the Chinese Government partnership, the firm seeks to bring good projects from North America to China and are focused on technologies that are at an advanced stage with patents that are willing to launch in Chinese markets or to set up factories and labs in China. The firm is however, willing to invest smaller amounts in good opportunities that have no interest/fit for the Chinese markets as well. The firm’s major focus within the life sciences is biotech and is focused on seed to series B rounds. The firm generally invests up to $10M USD for Series A deals, is flexible for series B rounds, and invests up to $1M USD for seed stage rounds.

Within the Life Sciences space, the firm is specifically focused on clinical tests, therapeutics, and other biotech technologies. The firm is also willing to look at medical devices to a small degree but is not very familiar with those technologies. Additionally, the firm is focused on technologies within these sectors that have a good fit with the Chinese Market or have a strong interest in working in China.

When investing, the firm looks to take a board seat. The firm provides consulting, localization services, and the ability to leverage resources in China to help the company grow alongside their direct equity investment and believe that these abilities can be best leveraged with a board seat.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com.

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Hot Investor Mandate 3: Investment Arm of Major China Genomics Company Looks for Complementary Early-Stage Genomics & Big Data/AI Technologies

15 Mar

A branch of a subsidiary of a major genomics sequencing company in China is actively seeking technologies from the US, Canada, and China that will complement what they currently have. In addition to direct investments, the firm often functions as a strategic partner that can help provide a technology platform for a startup or even integrate the new technology into their system. The firm also provides access to their large marketing team once the product is developed to help the startup during their commercialization phase. The firm is currently interested in early stage companies: usually at seed to series A and is rather flexible as to the financing terms. Additionally, the firm is willing to work through either partnerships or direct investments.

The firm is actively seeking new genomics technologies. Currently, the firm is interested in any technology within diagnostics, digital health, and medtech that has a focus on genomics. Within the diagnostics and medtech sectors, the firm is particularly interested in sequencing technologies currently, but is willing to see all early stage genomics-based technologies within these sectors. For digital health, the firm is interested in companies involved in big data and AI that already have algorithms that can utilize the large pool of genomics data that the firm currently has access to.

When investing, the firm likes to take an active role in the company and prefers taking board seats but does not require a board seat. Otherwise, the firm prefers to work with companies that the firm can work with and help develop into either a potential integration or a productive partnership.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com.

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China-Based Investors are Looking West for New Products in Diabetes Care

8 Mar

By Jessica Yang, Investor Research Analyst, LSN

Diabetes mellitus is a global epidemic, with the metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular risk factors believed to underlie the disease on the increase worldwide. Among this large diabetes market, China has a higher number of diabetics than any other country. According to a World Health Organization estimate, of all adults with diabetes, one in three is from China.

This attracts a large number of Chinese investors to investments in diabetes care. For example, in 2017, when Johnson & Johnson began evaluating whether to sell its diabetes units, including glucose meters, insulin pumps and other equipment used in diabetes care, multiple Chinese investors expressed interest in buying some or all of these business units. However, many Chinese investors are looking at early stage products in this space. LSN is in touch with nearly a hundred China-based firms that are open to considering pre-approval products in the diabetes and metabolic disease field.

Chinese investors have invested, in-licensed, acquired or formed joint ventures with multiple Western diabetes care companies in recent years – the investors are expecting to extract extra value from the diabetes market in China. According to Franck Le Deu, Hong Kong-based senior partner at McKinsey, it is possible that a Chinese company could extract more value from these technologies than a multinational since they have different expectations of profitability. Even with lower margins, a tremendous growing diabetes population makes the Chinese diabetes market very significant. In addition, Chinese investors could leverage its local capabilities and knowledge to help these companies’ growth in the country.

As Chinese investors are seeking Western technologies and startups to address the diabetes market in China, it is a great time for diabetes startups to consider building connections and working with these investors.

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New CFDA Regulations Already Showing Benefits for China’s Biotech Innovation

1 Mar

By James Huang, Research Analyst, LSN

james-wpWithin the last few months, China has been formally rolling out their new CFDA regulations that have given startups and new technology developers in China all sorts of benefits. These benefits include allowing the submission of data from clinical trial sites outside of China, allowing more Chinese hospitals to run trials, and allowing drug makers who are waiting for the green light on a safety study to go ahead if they haven’t heard back from the CFDA within 60 days.

All these regulation changes have seen a big boom to China’s biotech innovations. In fact, many Taiwanese companies have seen this regulatory shift as an opportunity to get into the Chinese market. Companies such as Taiwan Liposome (TLC) have started joint ventures with Chinese investors in order to run trials and commercialize their products in China. With the ability to submit their clinical trial data from Taiwan and start their new trials more quickly in China, many of these companies expect to see NDA filings for their assets by the end of the year.

Another highlight of this new regulatory system is that CRISPR human trials have already started within Chinese hospitals. CRISPR in the US, on the other hand, has yet to receive any approval or the go ahead for such trials. Some describe this discrepancy as being the result of China’s lack of regulations. However, that is not necessarily the case. China’s new regulations are geared towards pushing new innovative technologies into trials and out onto market as quickly as possible and has the benefit of being a newly reformed system. In contrast, the US FDA is a much older system using regulations that have been built upon for years, resulting in a much slower and more meticulous process.

Therefore, it might be an advantageous for startups to consider working with Chinese investors through joint ventures. The benefits of having an accelerated clinical trial process with reduced trial costs may be worth the pain of forming a joint venture with a qualified Chinese partner. Of course, while the process of finding a qualified Chinese partner and working with them may be tedious on its own, it definitely should not be immediately discounted. Given how the times are changing, a global outlook towards potential partners and opportunities is becoming more and more necessary in order to succeed.

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Life Science Nation Considers RESI China

1 Feb

By Jessica Yang, Investor Research Analyst, LSN

Life Science Nation (LSN) has created a fully integrated global matching platform that allows for buyers and sellers in the early stage life science arena to find and connect with each other based on a company’s stage of development and product. An integral part of LSN’s matching platform is the Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) conference series that that currently is held six times a year in life science technology hubs throughout North America and Europe. RESI is a one-of-a-kind partnering event, in that the event has a 1:1 ratio of scientist/entrepreneurs to investors/strategic partners. Hundreds of investors and strategics regularly attend the RESI conference to source technology deals.

LSN has been approached over the last two years regarding bringing the RESI conference to China. The LSN Research team has done significant outreach to help establish a strong ecosystem of China-based investors who speak on our RESI panels and use RESI as a vehicle to source and vet diverse technology assets across the silos of drugs, devices and diagnostics and digital health.

You Can Help LSN Decide on RESI China

LSN currently has concerns about bringing RESI to China, and indeed to Asia. At a typical RESI event, half of the attendees are scientist-entrepreneurs who have left a major pharma/healthcare firm or a university to create their own startup company, with initial funding sourced from government grants, friends and family, or angels. These scientist-entrepreneurs then attend RESI conferences to find additional funding. The issue for LSN and RESI is to understand if China has a sufficient number of scientist-entrepreneurs in China who are starting companies independently of government, pharma or academia? Also, if the Chinese model of life science company development is different, how can RESI adapt our conference to the Chinese model and make it work? If you’re interested in seeing RESI come to China, please take this survey below to help us better understand how we can successfully bring RESI to China. We are looking for sponsors and partners to support us in this initiative.

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