BeOne Medicines is paying $20 million upfront to reserve the right to buy a preclinical trispecific antibody from China’s Huahui Health.
The antibody, dubbed HH160, was developed with Huahui’s PolyBoost multispecific antibody platform to target PD-1, CTLA-4 and VEGF-A. The Beijing-based biopharma brought preclinical data to last year’s American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting that the company claimed demonstrated the “potential to harness the synergistic anti-tumor mechanisms, overcome resistance to monotherapy, and simplify the dosing regimen.”
Along with the $20 million upfront fee, BeOne has also agreed to pay out $100 million if it takes up its exclusive option to license HH160. Beyond that, Huahui could be in line for up to $1.9 billion in milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties on sales if HH160 makes it to market.
Alongside the licensing agreement, BeOne is considering joining in on Huahui’s future financing rounds, although this will be negotiated separately, according to the April 30 release.
“Huahui Health has established an integrated research and development engine covering the full drug development value chain, enabling the independent identification of novel targets and development of proprietary drug candidates,” Huahui’s CEO Chen Bin, Ph.D., said in the release.
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Founded in 2015, Huahui transformed into a commercial-stage company this year when Chinese regulators approved Libevitug injection to treat chronic hepatitis D virus (HDV) infection. The monoclonal antibody, which targets the PreS1 domain of the HBV and HDV envelope protein, is currently undergoing a global phase 3 trial with an eye to getting approved in the U.S.
BeOne is already a major commercial player in oncology thanks to the BTK inhibitor Brukinsa for blood cancer and the PD-1 inhibitor Tevimbra. The company officially changed its name from BeiGene and redomiciled from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland last year.
BeOne has already taken a trispecific antibody into the clinic in the form of BG-T187, which targets EGFR and two different epitopes of c-Met. The biopharma kicked off a phase 1 study in 2024 evaluating the therapy alone and in combinations with other cancer meds for patients with advanced solid tumors.
