China-based venture capital group Fosun Health Capital has signed a strategic deal with Shanghai CRO Medicilon.
The agreement – financial terms of which were not provided – will see Medicilon leverage its experience in R&D to provide innovative drug enterprises invested by Fosun Health Capital with services, including assessment of clinical development programs.
The aim is to create an ecosystem linking innovative drug investment and business cooperation according to the VC, which also pointed out that StarMab Biology, will be the first of its portfolio companies to use Medicilon’s services.
A Fosun Health Capital statement said “Through this strategic cooperation, all parties will integrate respective technology, market and talent advantages, embrace the trends and technological changes in bioengineering and pharmaceutical industry, promote deeper and broader exploration in various fields, and explore the possibilities of new drug development.”
Fosun Health Capital – which was set up by parent organization Fosun Pharma in 2020 - invests in a variety of biopharmaceutical sector projects – both early-stage and expansion-stage – that it deems to have “technological innovation and rapid growth potential.”
Its main focus is incubating high-quality projects from universities and research institutes and introducing leading overseas biotechnology technologies and products to China through introduction and cooperation models.
Medicilon bills itself as an integrated clinical research organization (CRO) and “one-stop R&D services for pharmaceutical enterprises and scientific research institutions around the world.”
According to recent analysis by consulting group Baipharm, Medicilon is one of the ten largest CROs in China with revenue of CNY1.167bn in 2022, which was an increase of 75% year-on-year.
For the CRO, the Fosun deal comes just weeks after it was given a “Best Partner Award” by small molecule drug developer Tac Pharma in recognition of the services it has provided a=under previously established collaborations.
Unsplash/liviu_c