Last month, Hutchison China MediTech (ticker: HCM) CEO Christian Hogg gave the following enlightening interview to CNBC (transcript below). I'll publish more on HCM soon:
Chinese biotechs rise on the global pharma scene from CNBC.
HCM CEO: "It's a coming out party (for us) after 20 years of grinding hard work.
It's the realization that many companies are now being able to innovate in China for the global marketplace.
The primary thing that's changed over the last 10 years has been the Chinese government's view on the regulatory environment.
Historically, going back 15-20 years ago it was very slow, very laborious, very bureaucratic.
It wasn't focused on bringing innovation to the people of China where there's an enormous unmet medical need for...you've got 30% of the world's cancer patients in China.
You have to be bringing innovative medicines to these patients.
So I think about 5-10 years ago the Chinese government figured this out and said, look, we need to streamline this process, we need to make it easier for innovators to come in and develop drugs and to get them to those patients.
So massive changes have happened over the last 5 years particularly over the last couple of years.
CNBC: Particularly the acceptance of overseas clinical trial data has really cleared the way for a lot of drugs?
HCM CEO: It's helping MNCs bring their drugs to China quicker. That's for sure.
Historically it's been more difficult for MNCs to bring their drugs into China.
But I think the Chinese authorities recognize that innovation -- doesn't matter where it comes from -- if it's going to help patients it's going to help patients.
So they're making it easier for MNCs to bring their products in (to China) and they're also making it more streamlined for local companies to innovate and bring novel drugs through to the market in China.
The drug that we're in partnership with Eli Lilly (ticker: LLY) -- this was an innovation that we created in China -- actually it's the 1st drug in a mainstream oncology indication to come from discovery all the way through NDA submission in China.
It's never happened before. This is the first one.
And we partnered with Lilly throughout that process to ultimately commercialize it in China.
The drug that we're working globally is with AstraZeneca (ticker: AZN).
It's a drug called Savolitinib.
It's a c-MET inhibitor in lung cancer, gastric cancer, kidney cancer.
That also has the potential to be the first drug that has been discovered in China to make it all the way through to US FDA approval.
Obviously we're still a little bit away from that but we're very hopeful.
CNBC: Is there investor skepticism about China biotech?
HCM CEO: I think there's always healthy skepticism about China.
A lot of companies that have come to list on Nasdaq over the years and have failed miserably.
You have to differentiate between new economy China and old economy China.
New economy, the whole IT revolution, Alibaba (BABA), Tencent (TCEHY).
The whole new economy -- I think biotech fits into that because it's science driven.
The reason we're listed here is because the specialist investors that reside in the US are in the best position to understand our business and value it properly.
This is all modern reliable metrics. It's transparency. It's good communication.
These are good businesses.
Old economy China is what I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.
And unfortunately that's what came here over the last 15 years.
Of course, people learn their lessons and they've got to differentiate between old economy China and new economy China."Disclosure: None
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