Dr. Jingsong Wang, the CEO of Harbour BioMed, a cancer therapeutics startup which started in Shanghai last December, spoke at this year’s BIO Asia International Conference 2017 in Tokyo.
The BIO Asia International Conference was held from March 14 to 15, at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo – bringing together the global biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry to explore the licensing and research collaborations in the current Asia-Pacific businesses and policy environments.
Harbour BioMed stands among the two specters, advancing an innovative therapeutic portfolio in immuno-oncology which is a promising area that is transforming the cancer therapy.
The startup’s discovery and development programs are built around its two patented transgenic mouse platforms for human antibody discovery – HCAb and H2L2.
The HCAb platform is used for generating heavy chain-only antibodies which uniquely enables the development of differentiated, next generation molecules. This includes bi- and multi-specific antibodies as well as antibody fragment-based therapeutics.
The H2L2 platform generates conventional, full-length human antibodies. Though both Harbour platforms eliminate the need for humanization steps and additional affinity maturation for product candidates, thereby reducing the time and cost of discovery.
During the conference, Dr. Wang said that biomedical company is currently at the U.S. biopharmaceutical business frontline in Massachusetts for their immuno-oncology platforms.
The CEO of Harbour BioMed also describes how his company is conducting a research in cooperation with Erasmus University in Netherlands, signaling the company’s possible expansion in Europe.
Investment Banking Vice President Oded Spindel of the New York firm Rodman & Renshaw was the interviewer for this year’s luncheon session, the highlight of the American industrial association’s premiere Asia event, organized with help from Japan Bioindustry Association.
It was also noted by Dr. Wang that Harbour BioMed already has some 30 clients garnered over the past several months, and had obtained backing from Boston-based VC firm Atlas Venture. Dr. Wang noted as well that the R&D networking from his days at Sanofi was being leveraged fully.
The startup was established in 2016 with an initial financing of US $50 million from Advantech Capital, Legend Capital and the Harbour BioMed founding team. The company is headquartered with R&D operations in Shanghai, business operations in Cambridge, MA, and antibody platform innovation operations in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
By Vivian Foo, VCNewsNetwork
