China’s booming biotech sector shows no signs of slowing and is spurring many contract clinical and manufacturing service providers to double their bets in a market that remains largely untapped for innovative biologics. But whether the boom will turn to a bubble remains to be seen.

The STAR Market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange has called a halt to the potentially third-largest biotech IPO this year in an apparent deterrent to the in-licensing model.

Beneath booming healthcare financing and deal-making in Asia is a constant flow of ready capital, but there are also challenges that may present hurdles to Hong Kong overtaking Nasdaq as the premier site for listings in the sector, a recent summit heard.

Despite a pending domestic approval for BioNTech/Fosun's COVID-19 vaccine, China’s apparent belief in another, domestically developed, mRNA vaccine sees a large group of investors pour hundreds of millions into a little-known private bioventure founded by an ex-Moderna scientist and poised to take on the US biotech.