Demand for innovative anti-tumor drugs is rising as cancer incidence and mortality increase. Compared with the global market, the Chinese market has massive room for improvement as fewer domestic innovative antineoplastic drugs exist.
Beihai Biotech (Chinese：贝海生物), a biomedical enterprise focused on oncology drug innovation, announced that it had completed a Series B financing round of almost CNY 200 million (USD 27.39 million). Yikai Venture Capital (Chinese：羿凯创投) led the round, followed by Valley Capital under Oriza FOFs (Chinese：元禾辰坤金谷资本), Qingdao Hongteng Equity Investment (Chinese：青岛泓腾) and Jinhang Group (Chinese：金航投资). The existing shareholder Shenzhen Guozhong Venture Capital Management CO. LTD. (Chinese：国中资本), continued to invest.
This financing round will be used primarily for clinical R&D for the company's core product, the new drug application of the innovative docetaxel BH009, and team expansion.
Founded in 2013, Beihai Biotech is committed to developing differentiated, innovative oncology drugs based on patient-centered unmet clinical needs. One of the company's novel drugs has successfully finished the critical clinical trials and entered the NDA phase, with seven IND approvals in China and the United States. BH009, independently developed by Beihai Biotech, is the first innovative docetaxel product in the world that has successfully met clinical benchmarks.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the market size of antineoplastic drugs in China was USD 28.6 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 99 billion in 2030, with a compound growth rate of 13.2%. And more than half of IND applications accepted by the center for drug evaluation (CDE) were for oncology indications in 2021. Innovative drugs will be an essential driver for Chinese oncology medicines and even the overall pharmaceutical market in the future.
Relevant enterprises include BeiGene (Chinese：百济神州), Innovent (Chinese：信达生物) and Junshi Biosciences (Chinese：君实生物).