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jq1234

03/27/25 3:57 PM

#254877 RE: DewDiligence #254873

It’s a simple excuse/blame piece rather than dig deeper trying to find real reasons for underperformance of public SMID biotech. Of course more competition has impact on public biotech but blaming Chinese biotech as main reason is missing the big picture.
Look at ADC space, ever since the flood of clinical data initially from Daiichi and then Chinese TOPO1 ADCs, investors should’ve realized both superiority and higher probability of success of TOPO1 ADCs. Even if we prevent big pharma from licensing ADCs from Chinese biotechs it doesn’t mean big pharma will buy/license ADCs from US public biotech with inferior data. What they would do instead 1) produce TOPO1 ADCs themselves like ABBV, AZN, PFE already done 2) license TOPO1 ADCs from public/private biotech not from China, MRK licensed from Daiichi, LLY acquired private EU biotech Mablink and Emergence etc. What they aren’t going to do is to license/buy US public ADC biotech they don’t believe with reasonable chance to succeed. The only path for US ADC biotech is to reinvent and improve as several public ADC biotech have been doing. STRO is an example typical biotech of realizing it very late its FRa ADC’s competition isn’t approved Elhere anymore rather upcoming ProfoundBio TOPO1 ADC GMAB acquired - would’ve been much better served by not wasting so much time and money on now discontinued ph3 and focusing on its own TOPO1 ADCs ROR1 (outlicensed to Ipsen in 2024 to fund now discontinued ph3 - again proved there’s market for US biotech innovation that's differentiated and not crowded target) and TF1 instead.
One point to prove Chinese biotech competition isn’t the only reason: big pharma haven’t slowed down in acquisition of private US biotech innovations, GSK $1.15B IDRx, LLY $2.5B Scorpion when there are equivalent public biotechs in both cases, NVS $925m + $2.15B Anthos.