The ranking of the "Four Little Dragons" has changed dramatically, and the R&D format is reshaping the industry.

• The involution of the PD-1 market and changes in investors' focus have led to the sharp fluctuations in the market value ranking of the "Four Little Dragons"; companies have recently started to adjust the focus of their product lin.

As one of the industries closest to the epidemic, the pharmaceutical industry cannot avoid the huge impact of technological innovation and changes in capital flow and production methods caused by the epidem.

The positions of the "Four Little Dragons" are frequently exchanged

First of all, the epidemic broke the steady state of the indust.

Hengrui Medicine, BeiGene, Innovent and Junshi are known as the "Four Little Dragons" of domestic innovative dru.

This year, however, things have chang.

Soon after the medical insurance negotiation concluded at the end of 2021, Innovent’s share price began to plumm.

The stock price changes of Hengrui, Junshi, Baekje, and Cinda on May 1Image source | Snowball

Judging from the recent news released by various companies and the trend of stock price changes, there are two main drivers behind this incident, one is the increasingly serious involution of the PD-1 market, and the other is that investors' focus has shifted to the research and development of new crown dru.

The continuous reduction in the price of PD-1 inhibitors has significantly affected the company's sales performan.

The change in expectations is also confirmed by the moves bycompanies to adjust the focus of their product lines

BeiGene has placed zanubrutinib at the top of the product line; Hengrui has launched an external cooperation model and acquired a large number of potential products to improve the company's product line structure; Cinda has gradually shifted its focus to gastric cancer, which is PD-1 inhibiti.

But lower sales of PD-1 inhibitors will only pull down their market value in tand.

Although Junshi Bio has performed poorly in the indication development and sales of the PD-1 inhibitor toripalimab, its 2021 financial report announced an annual revenue of 4 billion yuan, which is on par with Cin.

The concept of the epidemic also helped Junshi resist the impact of bad news about the development of other target produc.

Junshi also has TIGIT monoclonal antibody in the clinical research stage, but on the same day, external news disclosed the price of VV116 in Uzbekistan, and the company's stock price rose significantly due to th.

Junshi's success in the capital market is affecting the flow of funds and talents, which may change the company's overall R&D streng.

On March 7, Junshi Bio disclosed its first fixed increase plan after listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Boa.

It is expected to raise no more than 98 billion yuan, of which 682 billion yuan will be used for innovative drug research and developme.

The fixed increase plan this month has been accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchan.

On April 20, Junshi recruited another key person from Hengrui, Zou Jianjun, the former chief medical officer of Hengrui, and established a new department, the Clinical R&D Departme.

At the same time, Huang Yihui, the former deputy general manager and chief clinical operation officer of Hengrui, also left Hengrui to join Juns.

Zou Jianjun can be described as the "Iron Lady" in the clinical research communi.

Under her leadership, Bayer's sorafenib indication for liver cancer was approved in China only 9 months later than in the United Stat.

After that, she worked in Hengrui for 6 years, and the company has a total of 7 innovative drugs and 17 new indications approved for marketi.

This time, it is rumored that the salary paid by Junshi to Zou Jianjun is dominated by uncertain equity incentiv.

If this is the case, Zou Jianjun seems to be quite sure of realizing Junshi's turnaround in the tumor fie.

But she's going to fight a tough batt.

The boost of performance by the new crown drug has given Junshi the opportunity to turn around, but this does not mean that Junshi can immediately get rid of the introverted environme.

Junshi's market value surpassed that of Baekje for only two days before falling sharp.

Its current market value has shrunk by more than 30 billion compared to May 1 Last Monday night, the company announced that the head-to-head comparison of VV116 with Pfizer's PAXLOVID Phase III study in the treatment of mild to moderate new coronary pneumonia had reached the primary endpoi.

Although it is said that the stock market's positives are all negatives, such drastic stock price fluctuations also partly reflect investors' lack of confidence in the new crown concept stocks, or lack of confidence in the research and development of Junshi's other produc.

A simple arrangement found that the products developed by "Four Little Dragons" have many targets overlapping each other (see the table below for detail.

Except for PD-1 inhibitors, Junshi and other "Four Little Dragons" companies will compete for territory in PA.

, PCSK9 and other targets are stag.

In the long run, TIM-3, LAG-3, e.

will also become new battlefiel.

For many of these targets, Junshi's product development progress is relatively backward, so Junshi can only stabilize its market position by firmly grasping this opportunity and catching up in other product developme.

It is worth mentioning that Junshi is not the only innovative drug company that is expected to take advantage of the epidemic to change its market positi.

There are also Ascletis Pharmaceuticals, Kintor Pharmaceuticals, e.

in the indust.

This year, their share prices have also risen against the trend due to the concept of the new crown, and the increase ranks very high among similar compani.

With the increased market attention and the increase in revenue brought by antiviral drugs, their original product lines may also gain opportunities for accelerated developme.

Both Kintor and Ascletis have recently frequently released new developments in the research and development of products other than the new cro.

Frontier innovation takes advantage of the trend to rise

At the same time, the technological innovation of research and development caused by the epidemic is leading the innovation trend of new compani.

Compared with the volatility of the capital market, the wave of entrepreneurship of biotech companies spawned by the epidemic may have a more profound impact on China's new drug R&D industry, which will accelerate China's biopharmaceutical industry as a whole to move closer to the fronti.

The broad application prospects of new technologies in epidemic prevention and control have prompted Chinese startups and venture capital institutions to accelerate their embra.

From January to April this year, R&D customers have collected a total of 129 primary market financing related to new drug R&D, of which 60 companies, nearly half of which are related to CGT (cell and gene therapy), nucleic acid drugs and vaccines (see the figure below) , they raised a total of about 1 billion yu.

Among the 60 financings, 42 were in the early stage of the A round and before, which also shows that a large number of new companies have emerged in the above-mentioned directions and received capital suppo.

Among them, some new companies are engaged in technology and product research and development, such as circular RNA, in vivo base editing, universal cell therapy, e.

, which are still in the early stage abro.

But some of them didn’t get financing well before the pandem.

Ringcode Bio is a company that develops circular RNA produc.

It originally planned to start research and development in 2018, but did not receive angel round financing until 202 It is speculated that it is the new crown epidemic that has rapidly increased the popularity of the mRNA industry, which has made cutting-edge technology companies such as Ringcode Biotech favored by the domestic investment communi.

Another circular RNA company, Yuanyin Biotechnology, has also recently received financi.

The new company has also attracted many senior executives with rich R&D and management experience in new technology fields from home and abro.

Chen Hongmin, academician of the American Academy of Engineering and former chief scientist of Kala Pharmaceuticals, recently joined Jitai Medicine as the company's US president and R&D he.

Jitai Medicine is mainly engaged in nucleic acid and small molecule drug discove.

It has built multiple nucleic acid drug development platforms such as mRNA sequence design and LNP delivery syst.

In April of this year, the company just completed a $150 million financi.

Gan Liming, the former global R&D vice president of AstraZeneca, also joined Ribo Bio, a domestic RNA interference drug research and development company, as the global R&D president and chief medical offic.

Gan Liming has extensive experience in nucleic acid drug developme.

He has led a number of collaborations in AstraZeneca's nucleic acid drug field and led the company's first human trial of mRNA therapy in 201

It can be found that AstraZeneca is currently developing an mRNA drug AZD8601 for the treatment of heart failu.

It reached a cooperative development agreement with Moderna in 2013 and has achieved positive results from a number of clinical studi.

In addition, AstraZeneca has successively reached project cooperation with Mina Therapeutics, Silence Therapeutics, Accent Therapeutics and other RNA product development companies in 202

The executives of domestic companies have also begun to enter the new technology field to find development opportuniti.

Zhao Ping, the former general manager of CStone Pharmaceuticals Greater China, joined Binuoji as the general manager of Greater Chi.

She also previously served as the general manager of Bristol-Myers Squibb Chi.

Binuoji Bio is a company that was just established in November 202 Its main business is the exploration and transformation of cell therapy and gene thera.

The founder of the company is Dong Chen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a famous immunologi.

In addition to the above, nucleic acid drug and vaccine-related companies Aibo Bio, Ruizheng Gene, and cell therapy company Keji Pharmaceutical have also recently joined important executives such as R&D leaders or chief medical office.

They are expected to make up for the lack of R&D and management experience of domestic biotechnology companies in the corresponding fields, improve domestic new technology transformation capabilities, and narrow the gap between domestic and international advanced levels in terms of clinical development and industrialization of new technologi.

It just so happens that some companies established in the first wave of biotechnology startups around 2010 are now becoming more and more full-fledged in terms of R&D and commercialization capabiliti.

They are starting to take an active interest and look forward to partnering with new companies with leading technolo.

R&D guest once reported on a company engaged in in vivo base editing, and soon after, an investor from one of the "four little dragons" sought to connect with the founder of the new compa.

In addition, large domestic companies such as BeiGene have successively established innovation centers and invited new technology companies to settle .

In the long run, the R&D experience developed by large companies and biotechnology companies in the process of cooperation may provide support for the development of more new technologies in the future, which also means that the integrity of the domestic new drug R&D industry chain has reached a new lev.

After all, with the help of Pfizer, BioNtech's mRNA vaccine and drug research and development technologies have truly achieved global large-scale application, while most domestic innovative companies can only seek such cooperation from large foreign compani.

In general, the epidemic will become an important catalyst for the reshaping of China's innovative drug sect.

The rankings of some large companies are quietly changing, and emerging technology companies are emergi.