Ep. 344 - JPM Momentum and Asia’s Hotbeds of Innovation

The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference kicked off this week with sunny skies over San Francisco and more financial momentum than the biotech industry has seen in years. On a special “on the road” edition of the BioCentury This Week podcast, recorded on the sidelines of the annual JPM conference, special guests joined BioCentury’s analysts to discuss the biotech ecosystems in Asia.
The wide-ranging conversation spans dealmaking, including the pricing dynamics of assets in China and RNAi’s prospects of becoming the region’s next hot modality; plus the state of the capital markets, the global implications of “China speed” in the clinic, and what’s changing for start-ups in Japan.
Joining BioCentury were Panacea Venture’s James Huang, MayTech Global Investments’ Ingrid Yin, DLA Piper’s Ting Xiao and CBRE’s Matt Gardner.
The podcast was recorded at the 12th East-West Healthcare Reception, hosted by BioCentury, MayTech Global and Panacea.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658081

#JPMHealthcare #AsiaBiotech #ChinaBiotech #RNAiTherapeutics #BiotechCapitalMarkets

00:00 - Introduction
02:02 - Split Screen 2026 
05:57 - China's Rapid Progress
08:01 - AI and Biotech
16:58 - Deal Prices
22:56 - Public Markets
28:47 - Innovation Across Asia

To submit a question to BioCentury’s editors, email the BioCentury This Week team at podcasts@biocentury.com.

Transcript

0:00

[AI-generated transcript.]

Jeff Cranmer: 0:01

Welcome to a Special Edition of the BioCentury This Week podcast. We're now in our seventh season and it's the first time we've done this from the sidelines of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. Now JPM this year shockingly, kicked out with some sunny skies and more financial momentum than we've seen in, I can't even remember. It's been so long. Plus we had more than 25 biotech deals. Some M&A as well. Deals of note as this is the East-West reception after all, RemeGen's $650 million upfront deal for a bispecific with AbbVie. And we saw a newcomer to the NewCo model game Haisco. they partnered up with a Signate led by Frazier Ventures to launch a new COPD company backed by oh, $200 million I believe it was. So, joining me today, uh, we're gonna have. Two sets of guests, I'll introduce them all. We have James Huang, founder and managing partner of Panacea Venture, which has a footprint in the U.S., Europe, and China. We'd like to thank James, who's put this party on with us for about a dozen years now. Ingrid Yin will be joining us, she's Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Maytech Global, which also has been putting on this party for a dozen years with us. So thanks to Ingrid and James. And we have Matt Gardner, he's Head of Life Sciences, Americas for CBRE. And joining us in the second segment will be, Ting Xiao, Partner, Regional Life Sciences Lead at DLA Piper, coming all the way from Shanghai. She gets bonus points for that.

Audience: 1:58

Yes. And also jet lag.

Jeff Cranmer: 2:00

And jet lag points, of course. Alright, well, Simone, uh, you've been, busy writing your annual letter letter from the editor, and you struck sort of a optimistic tone this, this time around. And, uh, I'm wondering, you know, I, kind of. I'm an optimist by nature, and so I I, I'm kind of like, it's gonna be good this year and, well, we've had a few rough years. Maybe it's the Jeff Jinx, I don't know. But Simone, is there reason to be, uh, feeling different this year as we head into the JP Morgan conference?

Simone Fishburn: 2:36

Thanks Jeff and uh, thanks everyone. It's great to be here. And for those of you not here, we do all each have a glass of wine, so cheers everybody. Cheers to a good year. Thank you. it's interesting you say that, Jeff, because, uh, you may know this, my husband is actually my first reviewer on some things that I write, and he looked at and he goes, "Wow, that's really negative, how can you do that?" And I said, well, being as optimistic as I could. So I think it's a little bit in the eye of the beholder. We do really think that there's a sort of split screen going on in 2026, and I'm just gonna talk about a few of the things that are our themes for this year at BioCentury and things that we'll be looking at. I think in the second half of this podcast, we're gonna talk more about the capital markets, but clearly we ended 2025 with a lot of verve and momentum and you know, certainly in the follow ones and, and you know, really a, a robust year for M&A. So, we'll, we'll talk a little bit more about that later. I don't know that I would call this an optimistic or a pessimistic thing, but a major theme for us in 2026 is the issue of speed to first in human trials. I think that what 2025 did, was China just completely changed the global conversation about that. And other countries in the world have realized that that is and should be an incentive for them or a motivation for them to address their pathways. But globally innovators and investors are sort of frustrated that in the US you can't do that fast enough. So, the global footprint of faster first in human is something we're gonna be watching. Talking of global, we are looking at, you've done a very nice story on Japan. We will be holding. Our East-West conference in Korea. We've previously done one in Singapore. We are always looking for where's the next hotbed of innovation. I think it's a given that China is a hotbed. And then just on the, on the R&D front, a few things we're looking at. You know, talking to my college Selina here, and we've even seen deals today, brain shuttles is going to be a big conversation in 2026 and hopefully beyond. We've got, Denali's brain shuttle enabled molecule may get approval this year and that would be a first for the technology. And there are various other deals and programs going forward there. We also have a big eye on protein degradation pathways, targeted protein degradation, which has been around also for a long time, but seems to be making new ground also potentially with a, an approval this year. And then, one more thing I wanna talk about. In particular with respect to China is RNAi. And we really feel that, this was something that came up at our China conference, this thread, and you are nodding James, so maybe you're gonna talk about it, but really seeing China companies start to turn their incredible skills to a technology RNAi that's pretty well validated now commercially, and scientifically, and clinically and, you know, there's tremendous target space there. So we think that that's really an area to keep watching and there've been some deals in that space as well. I'm not gonna spend long on the other darker screen, which is still an overhang of risk.

Jeff Cranmer: 5:44

We had the Lord of Darkness on the, uh, the regular podcast this morning. That's our,

Simone Fishburn: 5:48

So I'll leave it there, yeah.

Jeff Cranmer: 5:49

that's our Washington Editor, Steve Usin, who, uh, hasn't been as chipper as he used to be. I wonder why? Why don't we, uh, James was nodding along there when you brought up RNA, uh, James. Matt and I, uh, had a good prep call and we were talking about all sorts of things, price points for assets, why we don't see M&A happening from West to East. James, why don't you, uh, just jump in where, where you're excited to jump in.

James Huang: 6:18

Boy, yeah, there's so many topics we can talk about. So, um, big picture view, let's say RNAi. This is a good demonstration what China's all about. You see, during COVID, China had no access to BioNTech and Moderna. And what we saw during that period of time in 2020 was this huge rush of companies going to RNAi. And if I were to look at today what they've accomplished in the last five years, and we track these companies, I can easily point to more than 50 of these companies. That is astonishing if you think about it, right? Because the whole field in RNAi, it took us in the United States a good solid 20 plus years to get to a group of very, very good companies. So what's so interesting about China is that, you have such good infrastructure, good chemists, good biologists. And that you can get from the initial discovery stage, to going through the animal studies, into initial proof of concept in men now in less than two years. Even though I don't know if you guys have noticed all these AI discovery companies in the United States. They've been talking in the past couple years, gosh, they can do something, get stuff in the molecule into clinic in less than 12 months. Show me even a single company can do that. But yet in China. We're seeing companies going to new modalities, they create molecules, and they're doing it on average, less than $2 million per molecule. Into animal studies, in the clinic. It's such an amazing speed.

Simone Fishburn: 8:01

Can can, can I just follow up on that? Yeah. And I think that there are two really interesting parts or important parts of this. One is that innovators in the West are very aware of China innovation in antibodies and in small molecules. And some of them, because of that speed are staying in stealth for much longer because they really are worried, right. I don't think that they've quite yet caught on to the fact that, siRNA, or which can be antisense or, or, um, sorry, antisense or siRNA for RNAi, you know, can actually, represent the next area. So I think that that idea of China become a powerhouse there has not yet really penetrated, which is why we talk about it. So we feel like people should know that. But the other part of it is what we see it kind of goes hand in hand with gene therapies, where as gene therapies are faltering for various, you're, you are nodding here, we'll bring you in in a minute. As they've got various, both commercial and clinical issues, RNAi offers this, you know, maybe twice a year, much lower risk, way of still getting at the genetic, um, it's still a genetic treatment as it were, and you're still getting at that space. And so it's sort of having become validated, it's now entering new areas and, and taking on, uh, you know, new potential.

Mathew Gardner: 9:17

Yeah, I just wanted to offer to be the club historian for a second, uh, because I think, you know, you, you look at any emerging technology in our industry and it's actually takes quite a long time to get onto the perfected path and I'll, I'll offer a couple examples. I think we could have looked back at monoclonals and they didn't just immediately hit, it took a long time to figure out why things weren't, uh, you know, being accepted and we had to sort of work on humanizing and then fully human. And now we've got a couple of the biggest royalty machines in the industry that were born in the East Bay here that I think both live in Tahoe now.

Jeff Cranmer: 9:50

Yep.

Mathew Gardner: 9:50

But I, I think, you know, the, the on

Jeff Cranmer: 9:52

On the Nevada side.

Mathew Gardner: 9:53

Yes. On the Nevada side, yes. Uh, so, you know, I think the way that, that technology progresses is a pretty close parallel to how we saw gene therapy get completely interrupted in the 1990s. And take quite a long time to work its way back and needed a lot of help from sort of novel changes in the whole process to get back to, I mean, CRISPR was one very important Nobel Prize winning step, but it was just one step. There were many things that came before and things that followed. So I think you could look at any sort of, of the broad segments the of the, the product areas and, and see that kind of long curve to the narrative. And I think it, it does take a long time. The aspect of that that I think is, that we touched on a little bit, and I always love talking to James about these things, because he's so creative and seen everything, is I think if we look back at last year, Merck was first outta the gates with the, with the deal, right. So if you, if you look at that Merck deal and you look at the sort of the cost per molecule that we're thinking about as a frame for the industry. This is a redefining equation at the moment, and I think AI should push that down. But at the moment, all it's led to is increased cost because they're all investing in compute power. And so we haven't actually seen the dynamic change in the discovery model yet, and I think it's still in front of us somewhere.

Simone Fishburn: 11:10

We haven't done data centers on the podcast before, you know, and

Jeff Cranmer: 11:13

We, we haven't. I, I, I sense a return guest in the making here. Uh, Josh, I wanna bring you into the conversation. What's on your mind?

Josh Berlin: 11:21

Yeah. Uh, thank, thanks, Jeff. And, uh, first off, honored to share the stage with a good friends here. And, uh, you know, James and Ingrid have been co-hosting this reception with us for 12 years. Unbelievable how much has changed. But if you think about it, 12 years ago when we started this reception, this is kind of what I was thinking today when I was wandering around Union Square, a beautiful day today.

Jeff Cranmer: 11:43

Mm-hmm.

Josh Berlin: 11:43

And I look up and I see a billboard for Insilico Medicine.

James Huang: 11:47

Yeah.

Josh Berlin: 11:47

On Union Square, you know, um, and Insilico,

Jeff Cranmer: 11:50

Did, did Alex put it up himself?

Josh Berlin: 11:52

He, he, he might have climbed up there and, uh, put it up or had one of his, uh, AI agents do it. Um, but I think it really speaks to how much the industry has changed. And how much the China story has also changed over the last 12 years, even over the last year. Because Insilico was one of the companies that IPO'ed last year on Hong Kong very end of last year. And the Hong Kong Exchange actually has not been in a bear market. And a lot of folks here are now sort of thinking about, you know, are we getting out of a bear market here. But I, I think that, uh, you have some of these companies. I saw another one, one of these, uh, trucks, uh, electronic billboards driving around Union Square from GenScript. Mathew Gardner: Yep.

Jeff Cranmer: 12:29

Mm-hmm.

Josh Berlin: 12:30

You know, and so it's like you have these companies that, um, I know James, you know, very well, um, but having a huge presence here this year at JP Morgan. And I felt like last year was really the first year that everyone sort of woke up to China. All of a sudden everyone was talking about it in the hallways. Whereas before it was only during you know some of the, um, sort of the BayHelix meeting and a few other meetings where that was sort of the normal thing. So it's just amazing how much things have changed. I think in one year.

Simone Fishburn: 13:00

Can I ask you guys a, a question about AI, right. Um, I'm sorry to hijack your,

Jeff Cranmer: 13:06

That's fine. I do wanna talk about deal price points though after this. We have

Simone Fishburn: 13:10

All right.

Jeff Cranmer: 13:11

A few more minutes with these, uh, excellent gentlemen, but go for it.

Simone Fishburn: 13:14

So, you know, Josh talked about, um, how last year, sort of everyone woke up to China and this year I think there's a lot of questions about AI. And, you know, I'm not sure which is the year. I'm not sure that there's gonna be any one year that we say. That was the year, right? I got this one year, but, but you know, a couple of the conversations that I've had in the last few days, especially with pharma companies, is that as they bring in AI across the board, right, from discovery all the way through clinical or through I guess commercial, you know, what they find in terms of processes is that you you solve one part of a workflow with AI. And now you've just created a bottleneck. So let's say, you know, you're coming up with all these targets, but now the next part isn't actually optimized. And so it's actually a huge dance and choreography. And you know, that is a thing that I think is, you know, probably gonna be more prevalent in the large companies. But you got, you know, you're in charge of small companies and I'm sort of wondering if that's a, how much you think that is going to be an issue. How holistic people can be in their adoption of this. And you know, as you create companies, what do you think, what are your expectations for them?

James Huang: 14:17

We, when we make investments in companies, we make sure that AI discovery is truly part of what they do, that's very important. But, you know, coming back, um, to making an actual investment in AI company, we don't do that. It's so interesting because I spent yesterday's, you know, like two of the firms I, I really, good meeting with yesterday, they make, these are tech backed type of, um, venture firm. But they have tiptoed their way into biotech the last couple years. But, you know, we look at most of their investments, they're all in AI. It's so interesting because with what I learned from both of 'em were exactly the same thing, which is that they have made so much paper profit in AI. B ut it's all on the tech side. But on the biotech side nothing. It's, and they were talking about truly an IRR comparison, right. On the tech side, the IRRs that cost 200%, but on the biotech side, negative, it's fascinating. Which actually tells you something about AI in our industry. We truly need AI. However, the problems we're trying to solve is so complex. And like you said, the bottleneck actually as we learn from AI discovery into development, the biggest bottleneck, believe it or not, it's actually clinical trials. It's taken longer than it's ever been. And we truly need AI somehow to survive.

Mathew Gardner: 15:44

Say, yeah. I'll, uh, I just am gonna jump right in there, James. I think that's exactly right and I think I'll, I'm gonna offer to be club historian again, uh, because we should have been, I would argue a pretty sharp and pointy end of this now, by now with cancer data. We've had the Cancer Genome Project for long enough. I think it lives at Santa Cruz, right? So we've had this kind of data accumulated for well over a decade already. So going on 15 years, ASCO itself launched something called CancerLinQ many, many years ago. I think it was at ASCO 2012 or 2013. I think to James's exact point, it just proves how hard this is, even when you have a known universe of patients and outcomes and genomic profiles. It's still extremely difficult to build the proof case, even when you can feed all that into your model. So I think we still have great challenges right in front of us. One of the things that I think is so exciting is what we've seen in sort of the discovery method evolving recently, the FDA taking some animal testing outta the equation and the tremendous leap in organoids. You put those things together and the amount of screening you can do, goes way through the roof. And I think that's a great application for all that high throughput computing.

Jeff Cranmer: 16:58

Well, we're, we're about to jump to the second segment in just a minute, but James, I did wanna get your take on comparative upfront payments, deal prices between West and East?

James Huang: 17:10

Sure, sure. Um, if you take a cross look at the deals that have been done by big pharma with biotechs in China. You will find majority of the deals are with these much more mature, publicly traded companies, they have platform and they, they're focusing on different modalities. And the development package is extremely complete. Right, so these are what I call low hanging fruit, and that's easy go through. Then you start looking at the next tier down some of the deals. Then you will notice that the upfront payment dropped significantly. Now this is one of the reasons why I continue feel that if you invest in China versus you invest in the U.S., one of the biggest differences you will see is that the big pharma will continue to buy U.S. based companies, but they will not buy China based companies because they can pick up assets so much cheaper. To the point where, as venture capitalists, we start to have to ask ourselves a question. If I'm making an investment into an innovative US-based biotech company at a valuation that's say $50, $70 million bucks. Yet I can pick up assets in China, at a with proof of concept in human, whether they're IIT studies or they're already in Phase I, at much lower valuation. Now, that's what we're seeing at the, at the marketplace. That the, the opportunity in China, from big pharma perspective, from investor perspective, you're seeing a lot of very interesting proof of concept already in human, at valuation is so much more reasonable. And that's why I think for early stage investments with these innovative technology coming out of universities where entrepreneurs have come up with the valuation in the US is truly a challenge.

Simone Fishburn: 19:02

Can I add one point?

Jeff Cranmer: 19:03

Quickly.

Simone Fishburn: 19:06

So, um, you know, some of our conversations also have talked to the fact that when a farmer licenses from China, from a China company. Very often, they obviously, the China company keeps the China rights, right. Now it used to be that the pharmas would go in and they would get the molecule and they might even commercialize it and work on it there for China. Now what we're sort of hearing is that there is a benefit to them, to the pharma in leaving the China company with the China rights.'Cause that China company now will take the same molecule and it will, it will test it much faster in many new indications. And so they're carrying on doing the learning, from you know the very fact that they've just licensed this molecule and left it in their hands as it were locally.

Mathew Gardner: 19:50

And that's how the AbbVie deal was today.

Jeff Cranmer: 19:52

Exactly right.

Simone Fishburn: 19:52

That is exactly how the AbbVie deal was today.

James Huang: 19:54

And also from big pharma perspective, people forget is the the pricing pressure within China for innovative drugs. I mean, who the heck sells PD-1s at $5,000 bucks per patient per year. You don't see that, that's just a such a small percentage of what we charge in the United States, right. And so from big pharma perspective, if the, their partner can generate so much more data, proof of concept for them to think about, well now in the West what we should bet on makes a lot of sense, right.

Josh Berlin: 20:26

Yeah. I mean, James, do you think that's gonna ever change? You know, I mean you have China biotechs that pretty much have to go outside of China in order to get an ROI right? Because of the, the low pricing in China.

James Huang: 20:37

Very good. So we've been spending since November talking a lot to the, the large domestic, Chinese, um, pharmas. And there were so much assumption about the fact that if I do the, the pivotal study in China in Phase III, well I can go ahead and do a bridging study, come into the U.S. right? I'm going to tell you under the new FDA leadership people better think long and hard. I am not sure with this new leadership, what we assume just even 12 months ago is going to be the way going forward, okay. And so because of that, the uncertainty and the headwind that's not produced with the new leadership, I'm much more cautious. And I truly believe for China-based large companies, because of the financial resources they have, you will actually see them tiptoe their way to do these earlier clinical studies also in the United States. Not just in China.

Jeff Cranmer: 21:35

Something tells me, uh, our Washington Editor and noted spy writer, uh, got through to you and, uh, convinced you to, uh, make one of his points when he couldn't be here today. All right, we're gonna leave it, leave it there. Matt. James, thank you so much. We're gonna take a quick break, and you'll get to hear at least listeners out there we'll get to hear about our upcoming East-West Summit in Seoul. Thanks gentlemen.

Simone Fishburn: 22:03

Thank you. That was great.

Alanna Farro: 22:08

BioCentury This Week is brought to you by The 5th East-West Biopharma Summit in South Korea. An arc of innovation is emerging across Asia, and Western biopharma leaders are taking note-from cross-border deals to newcos. In March, 2026, The 5th BioCentury-BayHelix East-West BioPharma Summit visits South Korea for the first time. Meet the biopharma leaders putting Korea innovation on the global map. Learn why Korea has become a clinical trial in manufacturing hub. Discover if Korea is the next hotspot for NewCo formation. Plus, meet biopharma innovators from India to Singapore, to China and Japan. Register now at BioCenturyEastWest.com.

Jeff Cranmer: 22:56

Okay, we are back. And as you heard just then, BioCentury's. East-West Summit coming up in Seoul. Josh, you wanna give it a quick plug?

Josh Berlin: 23:05

Yeah. March 9th to 11th. Um, you know, we really have been out to Korea a few times over the last few years, really seeing some interesting companies and we'd love to have you. All come out and see Korea for yourself. Also see a lot of great companies from the region, including Japan and China. So, uh, please check it out BioCenturyEastWest.com

Jeff Cranmer: 23:26

And we are almost sold out of presenting company slots, but there are plenty of room for more delegates, especially aspiring karaoke singers, apparently that's a thing. Uh, but of course in Korea it's noraebang from what I understand. Okay, well now we have, Ingrid has arrived after battling the Waymo's and the Uber drivers and the street cars of San Francisco. Ingrid, of course, from Maytech Global. A long time, host of this meeting along with James and, and BioCentury. And Ting has been waiting patiently, jet lagged, but still standing. Uh, we're gonna turn to the public market outlook, which Ingrid has been falling closely for a very long time. Ingrid, what's your outlook for this year in the public markets, in biotech?

Ingrid Yin: 24:16

Yeah, to talk about this year. We can't miss what happened in the past several years, and there was certainly a winter period in the healthcare sector. But I think we start to see the great thaw of, you know, ice age starting second half last year. And you start to see, you know, investor coming back'cause you know, the sectors well positioned and, a lot of companies went from hype face and to really starting to deliver operation excellence. And just from today's pre-announcement and guidance for the year from all the companies that presented at JP Morgan conference and the overall tone is very positive.

Jeff Cranmer: 25:07

Mm-hmm.

Ingrid Yin: 25:07

A lot of companies, you know pre-announce really good result and then have really good above consensus, you know, guidance for the year.

Simone Fishburn: 25:18

Ingrid, let me ask you, so one of the big questions, of course, is how sustainable this is. And you know, for quite a while now BioCentury has been writing, we really think we're coming out of the woods now. And, and you know, it sort of sputters out. And so one is what is the basis of the feeling that this is more sustainable than last time? And the second is, how vulnerable is this to macro effects like an AI bubble bursting and the whole market going down. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Ingrid Yin: 25:51

yes. first of all, I think despite the you know, capital raising difficulties in the past several years, despite some stock price corrections. innovations continue to happen and, all these healthcare companies, they didn't stop you know, pushing forward, you know, what they're working on. So I think in 2020 and 2021, there was a lot of excitement in the healthcare sector, you know, vaccines and all these products that's dealing with COVID that so much capital went into this sector and so many companies got built. But I, I do think that bubble you know, that went away and now we're standing at a much more solid ground. And, talking about AI, I really don't believe, you know, we as Maytech as a firm, we don't believe it's a bubble. And we do see it's happening in a big way, the productivity efficiency in the healthcare sector. I'm sure you've seen the announcement by Lilly and Nvidia today. And they're putting in $1 billion into this the lab in Bay Area to use AI to help drug discovery. So that tells you with such a big number of capital involved, you know, they really went from pilot phase testing AI, how to do drug development and all that. And it's becoming real program going forward. I mean, it's for next five years. We'll find out, uh, as this progress. But this is a very big important, I would say leading indicator for the space. I think it's technology is going to help, healthcare tremendously. I mean, it's in every country. I don't know if you guys read, the article on New York Times talking about BABA's AI model you know AI imaging help to detect pancreatic cancer. That's on the medical device side. And you see on the pharma biotech side, there's also innovations in diagnostics, and genetic sequencing, and also AI has been applied to areas like manufacturing. There's also digital twin is helping you know healthcare industry build hospitals and manufacturing facilities way faster. So I really think, we went through the tough period, but then all the innovations and the solid fundamentals will push the healthcare sector perform better, and I do believe it's sustainable.

Jeff Cranmer: 28:46

Excellent. Well, I wanna bring Ting into the conversation now and get the perspective from Shanghai. And Ting of course is partner at DLA Piper.

Ting Xiao: 28:57

Hello everyone. DLA Piper is a law firm for those who does not know this name. And so I'm here as a lawyer, but then also as a former life science scientist. I was a research technician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and also I was working at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Canada. So I want to bring in some of there, because I hearing all the things about Island AI, all the things of how that were happening in the lab, owning, on my research bench to the hospitals, right. So first of all, I agree with Ingrid about the sustainability about this industry. Now I'm putting on my lawyer's hat. Because why is that sustainable? We need to look at the policies. When you look at a government regulations, to see where is the direction's going. That's what we call the tailwind in American's language, right. In China, before we all heard about Notorious VBP, which is the centralized procurement, but then last year, China pro, a commercial insurance catalog. As you may already know, that is aimed to incentivize innovations. Already more than a dozen patented products already in the catalog. And then this is a signal also sent from the Chinese government to their market. China is not only a generic market, actually, we also value innovation, that's one part. And then also. With older patent term extension, regulatory exclusivity coming up in China, not in some of the European jurisdictions. In China that's actually another signal of sent by the Chinese government, we value innovation. Now, it's not all about generic. That's how older innovations are taking place in China. And then another thing is that Chinese government has spent quite some money through various mechanisms including state owned enterprise. They found a PE fund. They have their venture capital to inject into the innovator companies in China. And then they're industrial parks in China that are funded by the Chinese government, that's a lot of innovations are coming from those incubations. Overall I'm optimistic, not because I was a life science scientist, I hope this industry goes for best because I saw the policies and then regulations and then also general government fundings going into this industry in China overall. That's a very long talk for this simple question.

Jeff Cranmer: 31:47

All good, Josh?

Josh Berlin: 31:48

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, that's an interesting Ting. I mean, we've been following the, the China market for a long time. And you know it wasn't too long ago that the regulatory framework was actually not all that generous to innovators. So, I mean, how much of this do you think, the changes like the, you mentioned the, um, you know, some of the ip ip, uh, changes. I mean, how much is that, sort of lobbying by the China biotechs now that wanna have protection for their products to go global essentially, so things like data exclusivity?

Ting Xiao: 32:18

Uh, yes. That's a very good question. So basically you can imagine before it's MNCs in China, trying to lobby for regulatory exclusivity and then PTEs, and then that's the minority group out of China's markets. But then nowadays biotech and biopharmas they are increasingly doing that. And another, it's not about lobbying, it's about Chinese government. They want to use innovations to encourage the industries they want to do so because there are thousand and hundreds of innovator biotechs in China already, that's already there. They want to use that to incentivize innovations. And then there are so many generics, there are way more generics in China. They want to use this method to help incentivize transfer those generics to the innovators. So that's all the considerations. Yeah, go ahead.

Simone Fishburn: 33:16

I actually wanna jump in and I'm gonna bring in my colleagues, Josh.

Josh Berlin: 33:20

Josh.

Simone Fishburn: 33:21

I think I do know you. I've met you Josh. Pretty sure you are Josh, right? Josh and then Jeff.

Josh Berlin: 33:27

It's been a long, long day.

Simone Fishburn: 33:28

It's been, it's, it's, yeah. I'm only like, not even one glass in

Jeff Cranmer: 33:31

Only day one..

Simone Fishburn: 33:32

Yeah. Yeah. Only day one and not even one glass in. Okay. So I wanna bring in Josh and Jeff because. You know, I just don't want conversation only about China, especially in light of the fact it's the East-West conference, right.

Josh Berlin: 33:41

Yeah, true.

Simone Fishburn: 33:41

And we are, we are very much focused on where's the next hotbed of innovation gonna come from.

Jeff Cranmer: 33:47

Mm-hmm.

Simone Fishburn: 33:47

I talked earlier about our conference that you're talking about in South Korea. So Jeff, you've done a piece in Japan. You previously did one on Singapore.

Jeff Cranmer: 33:54

Mm-hmm.

Simone Fishburn: 33:54

I know you're very networked and talking to a lot of people in various Asia countries. Tell me what you are seeing now in terms of the rise of innovation and even of those markets in China. And, and Josh, I know you're a big expert there, maybe weigh in as well.

Jeff Cranmer: 34:07

Yeah. Well, uh, Japan, I, I guess I'll touch on that as, uh, that's the most, well, almost the most recent story I wrote. Um, uh, it's quite,

Simone Fishburn: 34:16

It's the most recent story on Japan that you wrote. Let's put it..

Jeff Cranmer: 34:19

That is true. And it, and it was a year and a half in the making.

Simone Fishburn: 34:22

Yeah. Yeah. That's..

Jeff Cranmer: 34:23

As, as my, uh, fellow Executive Editor, Selina Koch, who's in the audience, will tell you, Japan's a really interesting story. Obviously, we know about all the Nobel prizes, we know about the innovation. Japan has probably produced the second most blockbusters out of any country in the world behind the U.S., I'm sure China's looking to change that soon. In fact, all of those blockbusters out of Japan came from Japanese pharma, not from biotech. And so there's been this biotech scene in Japan for a long time now, but you never really hear about flashy venture rounds or big IPOs. It's almost like these companies have been set up, not necessarily to fail, but not to succeed. And now we're seeing, uh, thanks to government incentives including a two for one matching program, to bring in VCs not only from Japan, but also around the world. We're seeing kind of a buzz of activity and Japan's a little bit of a different nut. There's not as much of that gung-ho, cowboy entrepreneurial spirit, I think that you see in China or maybe even Singapore, Korea for sure. I think, you know, years and years of working for the big company. But now younger entrepreneurs in Japan are looking over their shoulders and are like, why can't we do that too? And so we're seeing a wave of VCs, like AN Ventures, led by Ken Horne, F-Prime, going to Japan. And what they're doing is they're taking. Japanese innovation, Japanese R&D teams, which by the way, this shocked me, are cheaper than in China and marrying that with U.S. venture money, U.S. management teams. And so we're going to start seeing some of these hybrid cross border companies coming out of Japan. Josh, do you wanna speak to Korea?

Josh Berlin: 36:18

Yeah, I was gonna say, uh, Jeff, the other thing, you know, we were out at BioJapan, in Yokohama in October, and I just thought there was a lot of energy out there. And a lot of discussion about this double matching program. Which I also hear other countries are now looking at this as a potential model, but the, you know, the, yeah.

Simone Fishburn: 36:36

Can you just elaborate on that was something I wanted to ask you. To what degree is this sort of, can I use the word viral? To what degree is this one country like looking at the mechanisms of another and you know, this being Japan's being sort of on first year, let's say for a long while.

Jeff Cranmer: 36:51

Yeah very much

Simone Fishburn: 36:51

So how much is that happening?

Josh Berlin: 36:52

I think it's, I think it's interesting because, you know, um, like Ting was just talking about, um, you know, some IP reforms that happened in China, and a lot of that was based off of, um, what was done here in the US with data exclusivity, for instance. So I think traditionally folks have looked to the U.S. for regulatory pathways that they might be able to adopt for their own countries. And I, I find it interesting now that folks are looking at Japan as a potential model. You know this is a program that the Japanese government has set up to have essentially so if you're at accredited VC, investing in an accredited program, the government will come in and essentially double match it. So if you've invested $20 million in the project, the government will come in and pay 40 million. And it's, it's essentially a grant, it's non-dilutive, and that's generating a lot of interest. And it's not just Japanese VCs, it's also the opportunity for U.S. or European VCs.

Jeff Cranmer: 37:47

Mm-hmm.

Josh Berlin: 37:47

Like EQT is one of the ones that's accredited for instance. and, sorry, let me just jump in there. And then you are saying that the actual labor is cheaper.

Jeff Cranmer: 37:53

Yeah.

Simone Fishburn: 37:54

So you get, you know, for your 20 million, you get what,

Josh Berlin: 37:57

You get more bang for the buck. get, you get a lot more. And so what is your feeling about the quality of the work that's getting done, and the you know ability to construct strategies. And are they sort of bringing in Western kind of advisors and so on to help them think about what, what would a path to the clinic look like and so on? Yeah, I, I, think so. I mean, uh, as Jeff mentioned, um, you know for many years I think folks have wondered why there has not been a biotech industry to speak of in Japan, despite the great science, despite, you know some of these great Japanese pharma. It just hasn't, hasn't happened. Um, and again we'll see. No one has a crystal ball, but I got the feeling that folks are now thinking things are gonna change with new funds, like Ken Horne's fund that Jeff mentioned in this matching program. I couldn't believe how many, uh, Western VCs were out BioJapan this year.

Simone Fishburn: 38:49

So Jeff is gonna cut us off in a minute. So, um, let me just ask you, what about Korea? Because their energy is not the problem, let's believe that.

Josh Berlin: 38:56

Energy is not a, a problem. Uh, and, there's, you know, quite a few up and coming Korea entrepreneurs, folks like SJ at Orum Therapeutics, who's on our regional host committee for our East-West Summit that we're taking out to, uh, Seoul in March. There's just a lot of entrepreneurial spirit. And, in Korea, it's a small market, so folks have to think about going global from day one. And I know Ingrid, I know you've, invested in Korea as well, so it's, a story, I think it's worth watching.

Ingrid Yin: 39:28

Yeah, it, it's really interesting. Almost 20 years ago I was looking at Asia healthcare. I mean Japan, Korea, and China, even I mean Southeast Asia and looking for opportunities. I remember back then, the ranking in terms of innovation in pharma, biotech industry, it's US Europe, leading, Japan is the next, Korea is after, and then China is you know behind Japan, and Korea. But I do think there are so many things happened in China at very, very fast pace. I mean there are many policy, positive policy changes that Ting talked about. And there's things like, you know, Hong Kong market open to pre-revenue, biotech companies that generated a lot of enthusiasm and also a lot of capital poured into here. And I do think Korean is still, I mean Korean pharma companies it's still a driving force in more innovations. I mean, Celltrion is, you know, Samsung biologics. These are very, they're excellent in CMO. And you know there are thousands of pharma companies, M&A among Korean companies doesn't happen as often as those in the Western countries. So that's you know, one of the reason. So there are certain conservative practices in the capital market, in the venture world, I would say slow down certain countries. But you know, it's funny'cause we look, we spend a lot of time thinking looking at AI, you know, in the AI world it's two countries really competing it's US and China.

Jeff Cranmer: 41:24

Mm-hmm.

Ingrid Yin: 41:25

Um, but I do think in healthcare it's global. Every you know, country is contributing, their strengths into the ecosystem.

Jeff Cranmer: 41:33

We're about at time. Sorry to jump in there. And, uh, Ting was nodding at a few of the points you were making. So Ting, do you wanna give us, maybe a final thought before we head to the bar and enjoy a little wine?

Ting Xiao: 41:44

Yeah, sure. I'm not going to drag it along, so I just want to remind what is life science innovations, actually? What's the source of that? I think in my view, it is people, it's human. Before AI taking place, a lot of innovation that's still driven by people. So we think about that and then that will drive which market actually has the most potential. Okay. my final thoughts. Hey,

Jeff Cranmer: 42:08

Hey, that's a great way to end it. Alright, thank you to everyone in the audience for listening, thanks to our listeners at home, if you like what you're hearing, like, subscribe. Uh, I'm trying to get my kids to teach me the right way to get people inspired to click. I don't know, Simone.

Simone Fishburn: 42:23

Skibidi.

Jeff Cranmer: 42:24

Skibidi, skibidi toilets. I, I, no, we're, we're gonna have to cut that, I think. Uh, okay and if you're interested in Korea, we have a great program at the Global IR Meeting, which will be just down the hall tomorrow. And, We'll have, a few great guests and one of them is claiming that they're going to explain how the Korean K-pop band model can save Korean biotech. All right, we'll leave it at that. Thank you so much. We'll be back next week.

Jeff: 43:00

Kendall Square Orchestra provides the music for BioCentury This Week. The group connects science and technology professionals and other members of the greater Boston community to collaborate, innovate, and inspire through music while supporting causes related to health care and education.