The global anti-tumor trade is hot in 2018

The anti-tumor field is one of the most active areas in the global pharmaceutical trade In 2018, the transaction value of the anti-tumor field increased significantly again, and the total transaction volume reached increased by more than 50% over the previous year (see Figure) Transaction characteristics in the field of anti-tumor in 2018, most large pharmaceutical companies are very active in the field of anti-tumor Among the top 30 pharmaceutical companies in the world, 21 have made at least one transaction in the field of anti-tumor, and the transaction volume of these companies accounts for about 25% of the total transaction volume in the field of anti-tumor in 2018 Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) and Merck were at the top of the 2017 anti-tumor trade list But in 2018, BMS made only one transaction in the field of anti-tumor treatment: reached a US $3.6 billion cooperation agreement with nektar on the modified IL-2 candidate drug nkt214 In terms of the number of transactions, Merck continues to maintain its leading position in the field of anti-tumor Gilead has conducted five transactions in the field of anti-tumor, three of which are worth more than US $1 billion, which reflects the strategic layout of Gilead's expansion from anti-virus business to anti-tumor business In 2018, global transactions in the field of anti-tumor showed three characteristics: the total volume of transactions increased significantly, and the number of transactions was relatively stable; most transactions had long-term conditional milestone payments; the actual down payment amount did not change much In the past five years, licensing transactions around anti-tumor immunity have dominated, with total transactions in the field of anti-tumor immunity exceeding US $1 billion in 2018 In these transactions, only two transactions are based on the listed projects (Merck and Weicai, BMS and nektar, all around the new combination of PD-1 drugs), and most of the other high-value transactions are in the early stage of drug discovery and preclinical research (see table) In addition, there are two major trends in cooperation and transactions in the field of anti-tumor: first, more and more innovative anti-tumor drugs are introduced into the East Asian market, especially into China; second, more and more transactions are carried out around the new technology platform In the past few years, China's biomedical research and development environment and innovative drug market have changed significantly Previously, a key feature of China's pharmaceutical market was the lack of the latest generation of anti-tumor drugs, especially the biological drugs represented by PD-1 drugs Based on this, from the perspective of transactions in the field of anti-tumor, more and more Chinese local companies are actively obtaining the right to develop and sell innovative drugs from foreign enterprises Although the number and amount of these transactions are relatively small, the rapid development of China's pharmaceutical industry will greatly promote the growth of such transactions In these transactions, the high-profile cases are: in November 2018, baichi Shenzhou cooperated with zymeworks company of Canada, and baichi Shenzhou obtained zw25, a candidate bispecific antibody drug in clinical stage of zymeworks, and zw49, an antibody drug conjugate (ADC) in preclinical stage, for exclusive development and commercialization in Asia (excluding Japan), Australia and New Zealand To grant authorization Zymeworks will receive $40 million in advance and $390 million in development and commercial mileage In June 2018, cornerstone pharmaceutical, headquartered in Suzhou, announced an exclusive cooperation and licensing agreement with blueprint medicine of the United States to promote the development and commercialization of kinase inhibitors avapritinib, blu-554 and blu-667 in Greater China Blueprint medicines will receive $40 million in advance and $346 million in mileage On the one hand, the cooperation between Chinese companies and companies from other countries and regions has accelerated the entry of overseas innovative drugs into China, on the other hand, it has also accelerated the development of Chinese original new drugs For example, at the end of 2018, the PD-1 drug cindilimab injection jointly developed by Cinda biology and Lilly company was approved by the State Drug Administration for the treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma and became the second domestic PD-1 drug in the Chinese market In addition to China, pharmaceutical companies in other countries in East Asia also performed well In November 2018, LG Chemical Co., Ltd of South Korea signed an agreement with cue biopharma, a US company, to obtain the power to develop and commercialize cue-101, the core product of the latter, and "T cell targeted tumor immunotherapy" in Asia Under the agreement, cue biopharma will receive $400 million in R & D mileage, in addition to an undisclosed advance and a $5 million equity investment At the same time, as the top investor of China's science and technology companies, Hillhouse capital completed an investment worth US $10.6 billion in September 2018, involving healthcare, consumer, technology and service industries The investment amount has set a new record of private equity financing in the Asia Pacific region New technology platform trading is booming Looking at the trading trend of global anti-tumor field in 2018, in addition to China's growth, there are more and more transactions around new technology platform, especially T-cell therapy, bispecific or multivalent antibody The table above shows that although large pharmaceutical companies are usually buyers of new technologies, small innovative companies are also forces that can not be ignored, of which the most noteworthy is allogene's transaction After Gilead acquired Kate pharmaceutical in 2017, former executives of Kate pharmaceutical, Arie belldegarun and David Chang, founded allogene, which focuses on building a new generation of car-t therapy of "allogeneic" In April 2018, allogene received a huge amount of US $300 million through round a financing (Pfizer holds 25% of the company) In the same month, allogene reached cooperation with many famous biomedical companies such as cellectis, aiming to jointly create a "universal" car-t therapy From the perspective of technology driven, the technologies involved in licensing exchanges in recent years show that: clinical value, registration supervision and commercial success are highly collaborative According to the data, the main driving factors of the transaction in 2018 are cell therapy, oligonucleotide, other antigens as immune stimulants, etc On the contrary, although the number of transactions around antibodies accounts for one-third of all transactions, its contribution to transaction volume has declined significantly The new alternative technology is also a key driver of major M & A deals in the global anti-tumor sector in 2018 Among them, three acquisitions of oncolytic virus platform reflect the urgent need of pharmaceutical companies to explore new treatment methods in order to achieve accurate treatment In 2018, several transactions with the highest amount were mainly concentrated in the field of car-t cell therapy: Juno, as the leader in this field, made a series of acquisitions in the past few years, consolidating its technical advantages in the field of car-t cell therapy But in early 2018, celgene included it for $9 billion In terms of volume, the deal is second only to Gilead's $11.9 billion acquisition of kit in 2017 In the field of traditional anti-tumor, GlaxoSmithKline acquired tesaro at a price slightly higher than 5 billion US dollars, becoming the only multi billion US dollar acquisition in the field of traditional anti-tumor Tesaro's product portfolio includes recently approved PARP inhibitor zejula, as well as a number of early clinical tumor immunodrugs, including PD-1 drugs In 2018, Lilly purchased ARMA bioscience for us $1.6 billion, including the polyethylene glycol interleukin-10 candidate in the phase III clinical trial of pancreatic cancer In early 2019, the company launched a larger acquisition to acquire Loxo oncology for $8 billion (the company focuses on the development of cancer treatment drugs based on specific genetic defects) In November 2018, based on a "tumor agnostic" development plan, vitrakvi of Loxo was successfully approved for the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors in adults and children carrying ntrk gene fusion, and became the first broad-spectrum anti-cancer targeting drug approved by FDA in the United States that does not distinguish cancer species but only looks at mutations Prior to that, in November 2017, Bayer entered into a license agreement with the company, with a down payment alone of up to $400 million In early 2019, BMS announced the acquisition of celgene, a $74 billion deal that will greatly expand the treatment of BMS's listed drugs, especially blood tumors and inflammation In addition, the acquisition will provide BMS with a large number of pipeline drugs in late clinical trials, such as luspatercept for myelodysplastic syndrome, ozanimod for inflammatory diseases, bb2121 for multiple myeloma, etc.