Li Ka-shing Announced His Retirement, but His “Pharmaceutical Empire” is just Starting

Li Ka-shing officially announced his retirement at a press conference recently, which has aroused wide attention from China and outside China. Li Ka-shing has been very concerned about pharmaceuticals and made much investment in recent years perhaps because he focuses more on health due to his old age or he sees the enormous development prospects of the pharmaceutical industry. Li Ka-shing has announced his retirement, but his "pharmaceutical empire" is in fact just starting. Let’s see the details.

I. Li Ka-shing and HMP

Hutchison MediPharma Limited (HMP) is a wholly-owned company of Li Ka-shing’s Hutchison Whampoa established in 2002 due to the optimism about the Chinese pharmaceutical market (the subsidiary Hutchison MediPharma (Suzhou) Limited was established in 2013), and mainly develops drugs for cancers, autoimmune diseases, and diabetes, etc.

It is reported that the current R&D focus of HMP is innovative small-molecule chemical drugs and some herbal medicines, for example, the oral herbal medicine HMPL-004 with multiple targets is mainly used to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and Crohn's disease; the new cytokine regulator HMPL-011 can be used to treat autoimmune disease; the new vascular endothelial growth factor receptor/fibroblast growth factor receptor (VEGFR/FGFR) inhibitor HMPL-012 (sulfatinib) can effectively inhibit angiogenesis, to thus be used in tumor treatment; and the new selective VEGFR small molecule inhibitor HMPL-013 and EGFR kinase inhibitor HMPL-813 can both be used in tumor treatment.

Phase III clinical study of the first oncology drug Fruquintinib independently developed by HMP successfully reached the endpoint in June 2017, which will be approved for marketing soon by CFDA. Fruquintinib, the first tumor-targeted drug independently developed by the Chinese scientists, marks China’s tumor-target drug striding from imitation to independent R&D. It is a highly selective long-acting VEGFR inhibitor and can be used to treat rectal cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. Fruquintinib has advantages like low toxicity, good drug tolerance, and good efficacy, compared to other drugs.

It’s worth mentioning that HMP has invested over USD 400 million to develop new anti-cancer drugs; among the 8 oncology drugs that have been marketed or in development by the company, tinib drugs exceed half, including: Volitinib Tablets, Theliatinib Capsules, Epitinib Succinate Capsules, and Sulfatinib Capsules, besides Fruquintinib.

II. Li Ka-shing and ChromaDex

ChromaDex is a natural product company established in the U.S. in 1999. It is reported that Li Ka-shing highly praised the company’s anti-aging drug Niagen after taking it. ChromaDex announced in April 2017 that its second round of financing was led by the USD 25 million invested by Horizons Venture under the Hong Kong, S.A.R., China tycoon Li Ka-shing.

As an anti-aging drug, Niagen has the main ingredient of nicotinamide riboside which belongs to vitamin B3 family and drives the Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide that can provide energy to cells. ChromaDex is actively laying out Niagen on the Chinese market mainly because of the huge base of the aging population in China, however, the R&D of anti-aging drugs has long been a controversial field. There have been many anti-aging products on the Chinese market in recent years, but they have gradually gloomed. Therefore, the future market trend of the drug remains to be seen.

III. Li Ka-shing and His TCM Feelings

Li Ka-shing has been optimistic about the TCM cause in China. He set up the joint venture Hutchison Whampoa Guangzhou Baiyunshan Chinese Medicine Co., Ltd. with Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in 2005, which has now become the biggest single TCM manufacturing enterprise in South China.

Hutchison Whampoa Guangzhou Baiyunshan Chinese Medicine Co., Ltd. established a joint venture Baiyunshan Hutchison Whampoa Laida Pharmaceutical (Shantou) Co., Ltd. with Guangdong Laida Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in 2015, which is a modern high-tech pharmaceutical enterprise that integrates research, production, and trade, and combines TCM and Western medicine production and sales.

Summary:

We can see from the above that the "pharmaceutical empire" of Li Ka-shing has never stopped expanding territory and constantly stepped into new fields since he entered the medical world, from cancer drugs to anti-aging drugs, and from Western medicine to TCM, which can be called a very large layout. Now although Li Ka-shing has announced his retirement, that huge pharmaceutical layout is in fact just starting, with the most significant drug Fruquintinib just marketed in 2017, and the investment in ChromaDex and establishment of Baiyunshan Hutchison Whampoa Laida Pharmaceutical (Shantou) Co., Ltd. taking place just in recent years.

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