SHANGHAI & PRINCETON, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LianBio, founded, seeded and incubated by Perceptive Advisors, announced its launch today with a diverse array of potentially transformative therapeutics from MyoKardia, BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. affiliate companies Navire Pharma and QED Therapeutics, as well as a strategic relationship with BridgeBio Pharma that provides LianBio preferential access to their portfolio of over 20 product candidates.
LianBio’s mission is to catalyze the development and accelerate availability of paradigm-shifting medicines to patients in China and major Asian markets. With a China-centric execution strategy, LianBio partners with Perceptive Advisors to tap an unparalleled global innovation mining platform that matches scientific opportunity to local medical need and provides select partners with access to the large and dynamic healthcare ecosystem in Asia, serving as an extension of their global development strategy in China.
“We are tremendously proud to be launching LianBio and strongly believe in its mission to bring transformative therapeutics to China and other major Asian markets,” said Joseph Edelman, Chief Executive Officer at Perceptive Advisors. “Our experience and precision-based asset mining platform will support and complement LianBio’s management team led by Bing Li and Debra Yu, seasoned executives with deep experience in the cross-border pharmaceutical landscape. This unique combination of talent and market savvy is already bearing fruit, including four partnerships to meet strong patient needs in target markets.”
“With over two decades experience investing in life science companies, we recognized the opportunity to leverage our knowledge, network and resources to launch a company dedicated to bringing the world’s leading science to one of the most dynamic healthcare markets in the world,” said Adam Stone, Chief Investment Officer, Perceptive Advisors. “Significant unmet medical need across the geography, coupled with our new generation business model, creates a unique and promising opportunity for Perceptive, LianBio and our business partners.”
Building a Team Uniquely Suited to Foster Cross Border Collaboration for Breakthrough Advances in Medicine
Helmed by CEO, Bing Li and President & CBO Debra Yu, LianBio has assembled a strong executive team of highly regarded industry veterans with demonstrated experience leading pharmaceutical development in local and cross border markets.
“Having worked with both Bing and Debra over the course of their remarkable careers, we knew their deep experience in both the US and Asian markets and their respective track-records in the global pharmaceutical industry would be an ideal match for the opportunity we see in LianBio,” commented Konstantin Poukalov, Managing Director, Perceptive Advisors and Executive Chairman of LianBio. “With the team they have already cultivated in Shanghai and the US, LianBio is positioned to leverage critical resources in both countries to advance the development of its promising pipeline to bring better medicines to patients.”
With offices in Shanghai and Princeton, New Jersey, LianBio has recruited world class operational leaders with extensive drug development and regulatory experience where innovation is a key objective. With a seasoned team heading critical clinical, medical, and regulatory in both Asia and the US, LianBio expects continued growth and plans to more than double its team by year-end. For bios on the full team, please visit www.lianbio.com/who-we-are
Building a Pipeline Rooted in Science, Based on Disease Relevance and Driven by Patient Impact
Employing a scientific and market insight-driven approach to selecting products and unique technology platforms, LianBio is focused on sourcing the world’s leading precision-based therapeutics and transformative mechanisms to effect broad impact on conditions of unmet medical need.
Through a series of strategic partnership, licensing and development agreements, LianBio is positioned to target critical unmet medical needs in local Asian markets with promising late-stage assets developed by industry pioneers.
LianBio Cardiovascular: LianBio’s cardiorenal subsidiary is anchored by mavacamten. Mavacamten is a first-in-class small molecule therapeutic that reversibly binds to myosin to directly target the excess contractility and impaired relaxation underlying hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM. Results from MyoKardia’s pivotal Phase 3 EXPLORER-HCM clinical trial of mavacamten for the treatment of patients with symptomatic obstructive HCM demonstrated statistically significant, clinically meaningful improvements in symptoms and cardiovascular function. MyoKardia plans to file for regulatory approval of mavacamten in the US in the first quarter of 2021 and is also pursuing the development of mavacamten for the treatment of non-obstructive HCM patients and select populations of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).
LianBio Oncology: LianBio’s oncology subsidiary is anchored by infigratinib, a first-in-class, selective fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibitor from QED Therapeutics, an affiliate of BridgeBio Pharma, currently in Phase 3 development for cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer, or CCA) and urothelial carcinoma among other FGFR-driven diseases. LianBio is pursuing the study of infigratinib in first line cholangiocarcinoma in mainland China as part of QED’s PROOF global Phase 3 study and further plans to initiate a Phase 2a study of infigratinib in gastric cancer and other FGFR-driven tumors. In addition, LianBio has licensed in BBP-398 from Navire Pharma, a novel SHP2 inhibitor focused on treating drug resistant tumors and other hard to treat cancers. LianBio will initially be studying BBP-398 in combination with various agents in solid tumors such as NSCLC, colorectal and pancreatic cancer, in mainland China and other major Asian markets.
About LianBio
LianBio’s mission is to catalyze the development and accelerate availability of paradigm-shifting medicines to patients in China and major Asian markets through partnerships that provide access to the best science-driven therapeutic discoveries. LianBio collaborates with world-class partners across a diverse array of therapeutic and geographic areas to build out a pipeline based on disease relevance and the ability to impact patients with transformative mechanisms and precision-based therapeutics. For more information, please visit lianbio.com
About Perceptive Advisors
Founded in 1999, Perceptive Advisors is a leading life sciences focused investment firm with over $7 billion of regulatory assets under management as of June 30, 2020. Since inception, Perceptive Advisors has focused on supporting progress in the life sciences industry by identifying opportunities and directing financial resources toward the most promising technologies in modern healthcare. For more information, please visit www.perceptivelife.com.
About BridgeBio Pharma
BridgeBio is a team of experienced drug discoverers, developers and innovators working to create life-altering medicines that target well-characterized genetic diseases at their source. BridgeBio was founded in 2015 to identify and advance transformative medicines to treat patients who suffer from Mendelian diseases, which are diseases that arise from defects in a single gene, and cancers with clear genetic drivers. BridgeBio’s pipeline of over 20 development programs includes product candidates ranging from early discovery to late-stage development. For more information, please visit www.bridgebio.com.
About MyoKardia
MyoKardia is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company discovering and developing targeted therapies for the treatment of serious cardiovascular diseases. The company is pioneering a precision medicine approach to its discovery and development efforts by 1) understanding the biomechanical underpinnings of disease; 2) targeting the proteins that modulate a given condition; 3) identifying patient populations with shared disease characteristics; and 4) applying learnings from research and clinical studies to inform and guide pipeline growth and product advancement. MyoKardia’s initial focus is on small molecule therapeutics aimed at the proteins of the heart that modulate cardiac muscle contraction to address diseases driven by excessive contraction, impaired relaxation, or insufficient contraction. Among its discoveries are three clinical-stage therapeutics: mavacamten (formerly MYK-461); danicamtiv (formerly MYK-491) and MYK-224. For more information, please visit www.myokardia.com.
About Navire Pharma
Navire Pharma, an affiliate of BridgeBio Pharma, and in collaboration with the Institute for Applied Cancer Science at MD Anderson, is developing inhibitors of SHP2 as targeted therapeutics for the treatment of multiple cancers. Together with patients and physicians, the company aims to bring safe, effective treatments to market as quickly as possible. For more information, please visit www.navirepharma.com
About QED Therapeutics
QED Therapeutics, an affiliate of BridgeBio Pharma, is a biotechnology company focused on precision medicine for FGFR-driven diseases. Its lead investigational candidate is infigratinib (BGJ398), an orally administered, FGFR1-3 selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor that has shown activity that it believes to be meaningful in clinical measures, such as overall response rate, in patients with chemotherapy-refractory cholangiocarcinoma with FGFR2 fusions and advanced urothelial carcinoma with FGFR3 genomic alterations. QED intends to submit a New Drug Application (NDA) with the United States Food and Drug Administration for second and later-line cholangiocarcinoma in 2020. QED Therapeutics is also evaluating infigratinib in clinical studies for the treatment of achondroplasia. QED plans to conduct further clinical trials to evaluate the potential for infigratinib to treat patients with other FGFR-driven tumor types and rare disorders. For more information, please visit www.qedtx.com.
