AstraZeneca signs $2bn deal with Chinese firm

Britain’s biggest pharmaceuticals company has agreed a licence agreement with a Chinese company potentially worth up to $2 billion to develop an experimental drug to tackle unhealthy cholesterol levels and related cardiovascular diseases.
AstraZeneca has entered into the exclusive deal with CSPC Pharmaceutical Group, headquartered in Hebei, a province in northern China, to advance an early stage, small molecule for patients with dyslipidaemia, where unhealthy levels of blood fats increase the risk of heart disease.
The licensing agreement marks a deepening of ties between the Cambridge-based company and CSPC.
The two companies have previously worked together in lung cancer research in China, but this is the first global agreement.
The deal is also the latest partnership involving AstraZeneca in the world’s second biggest economy and has been announced amid the continuing detention of five current and former employees by the Chinese police over alleged, unrelated, illegal activities.
AstraZeneca has become Britain’s most valuable public company, worth about £182 billion, in part through its expansion in China over the past decade, where it has become one of the largest multinational pharma companies and employs about 16,000 people.
China accounted for 13 per cent of AstraZeneca’s $45.8 billion group revenue last year and is its second-largest market after the United States.
In February AstraZeneca designated Shanghai, its China headquarters, its fifth global strategic hub, alongside two in the US, Sweden and Cambridge.
The FTSE 100 company said today that the licensing agreement with CSPC would strengthen its cardiovascular portfolio by helping to address the main risk factors driving chronic cardiovascular disease.
Under the deal AstraZeneca will gain access to CSPC’s pre-clinical, small molecule candidate, designed to disrupt the formation of a type of lipoprotein that plays a key role in the transport of cholesterol in the bloodstream.
High levels of lipoprotein (a), as well as LDL cholesterol, so-called “bad cholesterol”, increase the risks of the likes of coronary artery disease and stroke.
Cardiovascular disease forms part of one of AstraZeneca’s main therapeutic divisions, accounting for $6.2 billion of sales in the first six months of the year, almost a quarter of its $25.6 billion total group revenues. The sales include Crestor, its old blockbuster statin.
AstraZeneca plans to explore developing CSPC’s molecule as a standalone drug or in combination with others, including an asset in its existing pipeline that recently delivered encouraging early-stage phase I results.
CSPC will receive an upfront payment of $100 million from AstraZeneca and the Chinese company is also eligible to receive up to $1.9 billion for further development and commercialisation milestones, as well as tiered royalties.
Sharon Barr, head of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca, said: “This asset is an important addition to our cardiovascular pipeline and could help patients to more effectively manage their dyslipidaemia and related cardiometabolic diseases.
“Given the scale of unmet need, with cardiovascular disease being a leading cause of death globally, advancing novel therapies that can be used alone or in combination to effectively address known risk factors and advance patient care is particularly important and a key part of our strategy.”
Shares in AstraZeneca traded up 0.6 per cent, or 72p, at £118.10 on the London Stock Exchange, leaving them up about 9 per cent this year.
A spokeswoman for AstraZeneca said there was no further information regarding the detentions. The company confirmed an investigation last month into a “small number of our employees”, following a report from Bloomberg, but said it had no further information to share.