Although there weren’t many large-scale partnerships as in previous years, Korean biopharma firms were involved in a broad range of deals across diverse therapeutic areas in 2020, with ADCs, oncology and domestic alliances emerging as key trends. 

Public Company Edition: Initial public offerings may take a holiday break, but 2020 already has been a remarkable year for IPOs in the US and China. Also, Arvinas led the latest follow-ons with a $400m offering followed by TG Therapeutics with a $275m stock sale.

Cancer deals involving Junshi/Wigen, Allist/Octimet, Yufan/Abound, Takeda/Presage, Daiichi Sankyo/AnHeart, LegoChem/Harbour Biomed, plus a stem cell partnership and a lysosomal storage disorder agreement.

During the “Road to Commercialization” panel session during EBD/Informa Connect's recent annual ChinaBio partnering event, senior executives from top Chinese biotechs along with a leading contract manufacturing organization and venture fund shared views on biologics commercialization in China. Partnerships to accelerate the process, as well as the future commercial direction of novel biologics in their fastest-growing market worldwide, were also discussed.