Any seemingly sudden strategic decision is actually the result of deliberation.
After a controversial 2022, Harbour Biopharma ushered in a revenue growth of more than 8 times. Founder Wang Jinsong believes that this is inseparable from a forward-looking layout. He bluntly said that the most discussed problem within the house is "how to innovate and how to break through in higher requirements of innovation".
"Efficiency and innovation. Only innovation can have advantages, this advantage will have differences, and will create more value. "In the accelerated pace of technological innovation in the entire industry, how to achieve differentiated advantages in local fields, so as to maintain a leading position, better combine with more cutting-edge technologies, expand the application scenarios of technology platforms, and become an innovative international company, this is a problem that Harbour Pharma has been thinking about."
Without exception, Harbour Biopharma also faces some common challenges: first, no matter what the market environment, the demand for innovation has not decreased, but has increased, and many Biotech need to focus more on revolutionary technological innovation and application scenarios; Second, for product pipeline projects that can bring great benefits to patients, Biotech needs to focus resources to move forward faster and more efficiently, bringing it closer to the market, the clinic and patients.
Innovation capability is not only technological innovation, but more importantly, product innovation, execution and business model innovation.
Founding: Become a vanguard
From "catching up" to "leading", from difficult focus to focus, Harbour Platinum Pharma's dual antibody technology platform is impacting the world's first echelon.
Wang Jinsong is glad that at the beginning of its establishment, he insisted on benchmarking against the international innovation market to innovate and product line layout, and used the barriers of the dual antibody platform to develop a series of differentiated innovative products, and this decision made that year became almost the cornerstone of all subsequent choices, strategic transformation and even success.
After leaving the position of President of Sanofi China R&D Center and Head of Translational Medicine in Asia Pacific, Wang Jinsong founded Harbour Biopharma in 2016, focusing on the R&D and commercialization of innovative drugs in the field of oncology and immune diseases, and was successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in December 2020.
At the beginning of its establishment, Harbour Biopharma set three strategic development pillars.
The first is to be a global company. Wang Jinsong, who has worked in multinational pharmaceutical companies for many years, knows that in terms of market value, the Chinese market is only a small part of the global market, and the positioning of Harbour Pharma at the beginning of its birth is not limited to regional markets, but focuses on the global market. This requires that each project and promotion direction of Harbour Pharma must not only be in line with international standards, but also build strong core competitiveness in the international market;
The second is to use the differentiation of proprietary technology platforms to create a product pipeline with core innovation capabilities. At that time, in the early days of its establishment, Harbour Biopharma had a fully human antibody platform H2L2 and a fully human heavy chain antibody platform HCAb;
The third is to use the technology platform, relying on the world's best internal and external resources, based on the uniqueness and leadership of the technology platform, expand the global empowerment cooperation network, and maximize the value of innovation and technology.
In Wang Jinsong's view, "value" is very important, and Harbour Pharma has been doing "difficult but valuable things". He said frankly that to do what others can't do, you can't just be a follower, and use differentiation to build global core competitiveness, which is also in line with the concept of the Hopin team, "Many people can be followers, if you want to do this, it is better to continue to work in large companies, and even have a larger platform, product pipeline and more resources to dispose, and can also contribute to the industry." ”
This also determines a series of adjustments made by Harbour Pharma in recent years in terms of strategic development. "We continue to focus on what we do best, do what others can't do, and do what is most valuable." Wang Jinsong has repeatedly emphasized to E drug manager Rong media.
More than three years after its establishment, Harbour Biopharma made great progress again at the end of 2019. At that time, HBM4003, a new generation of fully human anti-CTLA-4 antibody of Harbour Biopharma, launched the first global clinical trial for patients with advanced solid tumors, HBM4003 is the world's first fully human heavy chain antibody to enter the clinical research stage, produced from Harbour Pharmaceutical's unique HCAb fully human antibody technology platform. In Wang Jinsong's view, the platform's innovation ability has been internationally recognized, and then a number of products have made progress.
For the future planning of Harbour Pharmaceutical, Wang Jinsong said that it will continue to base itself on the global market and continue to further improve the innovation of the technology platform on a global scale. In addition to continuing to deepen the core field of antibodies, it is also necessary to make more layouts in the antibody+ category, so as to attract stronger partners and generate more returns.
Secondly, as the product pipeline is further advanced to the middle and late stages of clinical practice, there are more from preclinical to clinical, and the milestones of the entire product pipeline will continue to be achieved, not only will several global INDs continue to be held every year, but also several parallel project clinical data, such as clinical confirmatory data, promote more project clinical numbers, and enhance the value of the product line. Concentrate on advancing some of the existing preclinical core pipelines to registrational clinical trials, mid- and late-stage clinical trials and global markets at the global level.
In December 2020, Harbour Biopharma landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In that year, the number of 18A listed companies in Hong Kong stocks equaled the sum of the previous two years, but most of them performed poorly, and IPOs gradually became the norm in that year. In addition to Harbour Pharmaceutical, JW Therapeutics also broke on the IPO day; Although Jacobio and Antengene escaped the fate of breaking on the first day, they both broke 3 days after being listed; Pioneer Pharmaceutical, Genor Biopharma, and Yongtai Biotech took longer to fall below the offering price.
At that time, Harbour Pharma felt some chills and challenges in the capital market.
Controversy: "Strategic transformation" in the cold winter
More labels on Harbour Medicine will occur in 2022, which is a "cold winter". In the eyes of the outside world, this year and platinum medicine are not good, and have experienced a period of trough.
In terms of core pipelines, in the second half of 2022, one of the two core products with the fastest R&D progress under Harbour Pharma was stopped and one was sold. Among them, the phase 3 clinical trial of tenacercept (HBM9036) was terminated due to insufficient efficacy; Barttolimab (HBM9161), which is in the late clinical stage, is exclusively licensed to Enbipu Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of CSPC Group.
The butterfly fanned its wings, triggering a series of strategic adjustments at Harbour Medicine.
Soon after the turmoil of the pipeline, Harbour Pharma made another big move, and the brand new factory that had not yet been used was also sold and sold its Suzhou biomolecule production plant for a consideration of about 150 million yuan, which was once considered by the industry to be "sold at a discount", and because of the tight operating funds, Harbour Pharma tried to shrink the pipeline and tilt resources to promote priority projects into the clinical stage in order to "stock up on grain for the winter".
Not only that, but the bigger move is reflected in the eve of the sale, Harbour Pharma established a subsidiary Nona Biologics, the official website of which disclosed that the company is committed to cutting-edge technological innovation and provides partners with IdeatoIND complete services covering target validation and next-generation biomacromolecule drugs from discovery to preclinical research and development. This move has released more signals to the outside world, and many people have speculated whether Hutchison Pharma will start to "sell water" part-time?
A series of moves fully show that Harbour Medicine is making strategic adjustments in the winter. In the cold winter of capital, how to effectively play their strengths and use resources appropriately is crucial.
This was also confirmed in the speech of Rong Yiping, chief scientific officer of Hebo Pharmaceutical. At the "2023 China Pharmaceutical Innovation 100 Summit" hosted by E drug manager Rong Media, Rong Yiping said that the current environment is indeed not easy, for some practitioners of biotechnology companies, it can be called the darkest moment, but no matter what the general environment is, what enterprises can do is to focus on themselves, push these projects down, the company can survive. "How to run the resources most efficiently and push the project down, this is what every Biotech is working on."
When it comes to Harbour Pharmaceutical, Rong Yiping said that the company has also taken various measures to push the project forward through flexible business models, such as licensing some products to overseas companies, or jointly developing and commercializing a product with large domestic pharmaceutical companies, and even making some trade-offs in production capacity.
For the ups and downs of 2022 and a series of strategic adjustments during Hebo Pharmaceutical, Wang Jinsong stressed that the original intention of establishing a global biopharmaceutical company with core competitiveness has never changed, and every year will be adjusted for specific projects and sectors, and the overall strategic direction has not changed, but in the specific practical process, some operational adjustments have been made to optimize the overall strategic direction, focus on doing what they are best at, and do what can provide the most value.
It may be understood that Harbour Pharma has upgraded its "global innovation" strategy in an all-round way. When it comes to the content of strategic transformation, Wang Jinsong introduced, first, in China and overseas, Harbour Biopharma will look for the strongest commercialization partners in commercialization; The second is to further reflect the value of the technology platform, not only in nature, but also in different stages, different disease fields, and different technology platform combinations, so that the value of the technology platform can be wrapped in multiple businesses and the value can be fully released. In terms of strengths, we will continue to do more deep cultivation and building, and invest more resources, such as bispecific antibodies based on "immune cell adapter", which is in the first echelon in the world.
In 2022, revenue increased 8 times
After cutting pipelines, stopping pipelines, and selling factories after a series of survival moves with broken arms, Harbour Pharmaceutical's revenue in 2022 increased by more than 8 times year-on-year. During this period, there were many blockbuster license-outs, including many early pipelines, why are they so popular? Is its growth potential underestimated?
From the end of 2022, Harbour Therapeutics as a whole relies on two directions to promote its business, one is Harbour Therapeutics, which concentrates resources on the platform and fully promotes its product pipeline; Second, Nona Biologics, relying on a more innovative and scalable technology platform, is more flexible to promote the development of the entire technology platform business with partners around the world.
According to the financial report of Harbour Pharmaceutical, the revenue sources in 2022 mainly come from two aspects, one is technology licensing, the other is product licensing, the internal innovation ability is gradually strengthened, and after the product pipeline gradually matures, it will continue to generate revenue in product licensing, so that the revenue in 2022 will be greatly improved.
"This is a differentiator for Harbour Pharma because few companies have the technology to be strong and consistently generate cash and other revenue. In the future, it will also realize the growth from existing technology licensing, product licensing to technical service business. It can be seen that Harbour Pharma has begun to show results in the new development model of innovation in development model innovation and "product pipeline + platform cooperation".
According to incomplete statistics, Triple Pharmaceutical's cooperation objects include AstraZeneca, Moderna, Dragonfly Therapeutics, and CSPC Pharmaceutical Group. For example, in 2022, it signed a global licensing agreement for the development and commercialization of HBM7022 global licensing agreement with AstraZeneca, receiving an upfront payment of US$25 million, a milestone payment of up to US$325 million and royalties. In February 2023, Harbour Biopharma granted Cullinan Oncology, an oncogen-related bispecific antibody drug, exclusive rights to develop and commercialize HBM7008, an oncology-related bispecific antibody in the United States, to receive an upfront payment of $25 million and a milestone payment of up to $600 million, as well as tiered royalties of up to nearly 20% of sales.
The newly established Nona Biotech has also received large orders and cooperated with Moderna and Dragonfly.
In November 2022, Nona Biologics entered into a licensing and collaboration agreement with Moderna, under which Moderna will receive a set of exclusive sublicensable licenses for multiple target sequences developed by the HCAb platform for the research and development of gene therapies, with overall responsibility for all aspects related to its development, manufacturing, regulation and commercialization. Nona Biologics will receive a one-time upfront payment of $6 million, milestone payments of up to approximately $500 million and related tiered royalties. In addition, Moderna will have the option to receive an exclusive sublicensable license for additional target sequences, and Nona Biologics will receive corresponding upfront payments, milestone payments, and tiered royalties.
In the same month, Nona Biologics signed a collaboration agreement with Dragonfly Therapeutics to generate fully human heavy-chain antibodies using the company's proprietary HCAb transgenic mouse platform for the development of bispecific antibodies and multispecific antibody therapies. Under the agreement, Nona Biologics will provide Dragonfly Therapeutics with access to HCAb technology and generate antibody products for designated targets based on Dragonfly Therapeutics' needs.
This trend continues into 2023, and up to now, Nona Biologics has not only reached cooperation in a variety of therapeutic modalities including ADC, mRNA, cell therapy, etc., but also expanded into a broader field such as immune tumors and infections.
The reason for the success of the review is that first of all, there must be hard core technology, and then push the technology platform to the international leading position. Coupled with the initial international cooperation gene taking root, with the advancement of the company's product pipeline and the further maturity of the technology platform, the entire international cooperation has changed from pure technology platform cooperation to technology platform and product cooperation.
For the consideration of the later commercialization of products, Wang Jinsong believes that at this stage, it is not realistic to carry out commercial development globally. Therefore, Harbour BioMed will focus on finding relevant global clinical and global market development partners at different stages. But the most important thing is to use the efficient clinical operation team that the company has honed to generate clinical validation data as soon as possible and promote these products to the middle and late stages of the clinic.