Former JHL Biotech Inc. CEO Racho Jordanov and former Chief Operating Officer Rose Lin were sentenced for their respective roles in conspiring to commit trade secret theft and wire fraud exceeding $101 million. The pair last summer admitted to obtaining confidential, proprietary, and trade-secret information from Roche Holding AG’s Genentech Inc. unit and using what they stole to reduce expenses and hasten the timeline of JHL’s efforts to develop biosimilars.
Three U.S.-listed China-based biopharmas were among five companies named this week by the U.S. SEC for reportedly failing to submit necessary accounting reports under the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act (HFCAA).
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently issued a provisional list of five U.S.-listed Chinese companies that reportedly failed to submit necessary accounting reports required under Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act. The list included three biopharmas: Beigene Ltd., Hutchmed Ltd., and Zai Lab Ltd.
Chinese investment in U.S. companies is dropping, but Chinese biopharma firms are increasingly eyeing licensing deals on early stage inventions patented by U.S. universities, Lin Sun-Hoffman, founding partner at Liu, Chen & Hoffman LLP, said during a Feb. 24 U.S. Patent and Trademark Office webinar on biopharma patents in China.
Despite Reata Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s complete response letter (CRL) for bardoxolone in treating kidney function loss in those with Alport syndrome, the street treated the company well on Feb. 28.
Over the past few years, China has been quick to make promises to improve its regulatory and patent schemes for biopharmaceuticals and medical devices in keeping with its World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments, but it’s been slow to fulfill those promises – at least in the eyes of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
Although diversity was front and center, it wasn’t the only reason the U.S. FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted 14-1 on Feb. 10 that additional clinical trials demonstrating applicability to the U.S. non-small-cell lung cancer population are needed before sintilimab, a PD-1 inhibitor partnered in the U.S. by Innovent Biologics Co. Ltd. and Eli Lilly and Co., is ready for approval.
Biosimilars are bearing the brunt of the impact that COVID-19 has had on the U.S. FDA’s inspection program, which has ground almost to a halt during the pandemic. That’s the message Juliana Reed, president of the Biosimilars Forum, delivered to a House subcommittee last week.
A U.S. federal jury convicted Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry and chemical biology department, on charges related to lying to federal authorities about his affiliation with China’s Thousand Talents Plan and the Wuhan University of Technology, as well as failing to report the income he received from the institute.
Rnaimmune Inc., which in April raised a $10 million seed round to support its discovery and development of RNAi therapies, said it is now studying the neutralizing effects of its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate on the Omicron variant.
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