CICC, AstraZeneca launch $1b China healthcare fund
China International Capital Corporation (CICC) and global pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca are looking to raise $1 billion for a fund that will back Chinese healthcare companies as well as international players looking to enter the country.
Part of the Healthcare Industrial Fund’s mandate is to back start-ups based at the Wuxi International Life Science Innovation Campus, which opened in September. The facility, known as I•Campus, is expected to host 50 companies over the next three years. It is part of AstraZeneca’s global initiative to drive healthcare R&D in emerging markets through the creation of local bio-hubs.
The first batch of companies to take up residence in I•Campus include: Omron and ClearSky, medical devices manufacturers from Japan and the UK, respectively; Chinese clinical trials specialist Tigermed; Russian natural linguistic analysis company Semantic Hub; Taiwanese medicine transmission platform HCmed; Indian healthcare artificial intelligence (AI) specialist Tricog; and Abcodia and Sanomics, cancer screening companies from the UK and Hong Kong, respectively. It has not been specified whether these businesses have or will receive capital from the Healthcare Industrial Fund.
“The new fund will inject vitality into the small and medium-sized healthcare innovation enterprises with promising development prospects, so that they can achieve substantial growth in China. With this new commitment, AstraZeneca will further increase its contribution to the development of healthcare in China, and to exporting domestic innovations that benefit patients worldwide.” Leon Wang, executive vice president for the international region and China at AstraZeneca, said in a statement.
The fund was announced alongside plans to build two new facilities in Shanghai: a global R&D center, which will focus on diseases that are prevalent in China, and an AI innovation center. The latter will look for ways to apply digital technology to drug R&D, manufacturing, operations and commercialization. A dedicated group will concentrate on collaborations with technology companies and local start-ups.
AstraZeneca has been present in China since 1993 and has 15,000 employees in the country. Two years ago, it launched an innovation center in Wuxi to explore innovative internet-connected diagnosis and treatment solutions. It also cooperated with SDIC Fund Management – an arm of China’s State Development & Investment Corporation – to launch local drug developer Dizal Pharmaceutical.
Last year, a consortium led by Boyu Capital, 6 Dimensions Capital and Hillhouse Capital invested up to $250 million in Viela Bio, a pharmaceutical research and development company that spun out from AstraZeneca. It took over the development of six medicines being researched by MedImmune, AstraZeneca’s global biologics research and development arm.
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