Repost: Fudan University Sells Anti-Tumor Drug Patent to a U.S. Company for 400 Million RMB

Original headline: Fudan University sells anti-tumor drug patent to a U.S. company for a record US$65 million.

On March 15, Fudan University and the U.S. company HUYA (Huya Bioscience) reached an agreement in Shanghai: Professor Yang Qing of Fudan's School of Life Sciences licensed, for compensation, an IDO inhibitor with independent intellectual property rights, intended for tumor immunotherapy, to HUYA. The licensing deal will bring Fudan University and Professor Yang Qing up to US$65 million in revenue.

It is understood that IDO inhibitors, as drugs with novel targets and new mechanisms, can be applied to treat cancer, Alzheimer's disease, depression, cataracts and other major diseases, offering broad prospects for social and economic benefit.

At present, the overseas pharmaceutical industry is quite optimistic about the market prospects of IDO inhibitors, and several well-known foreign drug companies have announced they will join the race to develop them. However, existing IDO inhibitors generally have low inhibitory potency, and no IDO inhibitor drug has yet reached the market. So far, related compounds developed by the U.S. companies NewLink Genetics and Incyte have entered clinical trials. The novel IDO inhibitor led by Yang Qing has already filed domestic patents and a PCT international patent, and is expected to become the third IDO inhibitor to enter clinical research.

According to the agreement, HUYA will pay Fudan University a certain upfront payment. If the IDO inhibitor achieves superior efficacy in overseas clinical trials, is successfully launched in the EU, the U.S. and Japan, and reaches various annual sales targets, HUYA will pay Fudan milestone payments totaling no more than US$65 million.

One could say US$65 million is a fairly handsome price, Yi Baxian, vice president of the China State Institute of Pharmaceutical Industry, told The Paper. The Fudan–HUYA collaboration sets a very good example for domestic universities and research institutions.

Yi Baxian noted that, compared with the more mature industry–academia–research models abroad, domestic universities and research institutions currently face a structural bottleneck in exporting patents overseas—the most prominent being that the valuation problem for innovative drugs at the research stage remains unresolved.

Because there are currently no specialized institutions in China that perform this kind of valuation, and research institutions lack the funds to establish such specialized departments. In other words, our research institutions are not market-oriented enough, which means domestic research is often unrecognized or undervalued in overseas markets, Yi said.

In the past, Europe and America have long led China in innovative drug research, and there have been few cases of China exporting patents abroad, Shi Lichen, founder of the Beijing Dingchen Pharmaceutical Management Consulting Center, told reporters. He noted that innovative drug R&D is a process of heavy investment, high risk and long cycles. For a long period, basic and high-end research in China's innovative drug field was relatively weak; on top of that, after a new Chinese drug is developed, the approval process is lengthy and it must pass bidding before entering hospitals, so enterprises have had little enthusiasm for developing indigenous innovative drugs, and the market has been dominated by generics.

With the launch of the National Science and Technology Major Project, domestic enterprises and research institutions have begun to increase investment in indigenous innovative drug R&D.

Yi Baxian revealed that in the last seven or eight years, the number of innovative drugs in China fully owned by independent intellectual property rights has already reached more than 30, and domestic drug companies and research institutions are increasingly exporting drugs and patents to overseas markets.

At present, China's indigenous new drugs are entering a period of explosive growth. On February 26, Liu Qian, deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, told the National Science, Technology and Education Work Conference on Health and Family Planning that during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, China's indigenous new drugs were three times the total of the preceding 50 years; among them, 139 varieties obtained clinical approval certificates, a 12.5-fold increase over the 11th Five-Year Plan period. More than 200 large-volume drug varieties were technically upgraded, improving the accessibility of clinical medication.