China's Innovent Biologics gets $260m Series D round

Future Industry Investment Fund, which is managed by a subsidiary of SDIC, is the principal investor in the round. It is joined by the private equity division of China Life, Ping An Insurance, Taikang Insurance Group and Milestone Capital. Several of the company's existing backers, including Legend Capital, Temasek Holdings and Hillhouse Capital, also took part.

The new capital will be used to accelerate development of Innovent's pipeline of biologic therapeutics, several of which have entered clinical evaluation. Since the company was established in 2011, it was built up a pipeline of 12 products; filings have been made with the US Food & Drug Administration for eight of these, while four are in clinical development and three of these are currently in phase three clinical trials.

With an R&D facility and manufacturing plants in Suzhou Industrial Park, the company seeks to establish licensing agreements with global pharmaceutical companies as well as creating its own treatments and working in partnership with peers that want to develop biologic drugs in Asia.

Lilly Asia Ventures, Fidelity Biosciences and Fidelity Growth Partners Asia committed $25 million in Series B funding to Innovent in 2012. This was followed by a $100 million Series C round in early 2015 led by Legend Capital. Lilly Asia, the two Fidelity funds and Frontline Bioventures all re-upped in that round, while Temasek came in as a new investor.

Last year, when pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was looking for a partner to collaborate with on new cancer treatments for the China market, Innovent was a logical choice given Lilly Asia - formerly a captive VC unit but now an independent - was an investor. The two firms agreed to develop products potentially worth more than $456 million. The deal was subsequently expanded to $1 billion.

"The Chinese biotechnology industry is in a golden period of rapid development, and Innovent is leading the way as the premier Chinese biologics company. We have conducted comprehensive due diligence on Innovent's pipeline, drug development capability, product quality and manufacturing facilities, and believe that Innovent has huge potential and is expected to become a top-tier global biopharmaceutical company," Simon Lu, managing director of SDIC Fund Management, said in a statement.

SDIC Fund Management, which manages the Future Industry Investment Fund for SDIC, was established in 2009. It manages and advises more than RMB50 billion ($7.2 billion) of capital for a wide range of investors, including financial institutions, social security funds, state-owned enterprises and private-held corporates.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Healthcare
• Expansion
• China
• Ping An
• China Life
• Hillhouse Capital Management
• Legend Capital
• Temasek Holdings
• Growth capital