Abbott may be partner for Chi-Med
Hutchison China MediTech Ltd., the pharmaceutical company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, aims to find a partner this year for its experimental treatment for a bowel disorder and plans to spin off its drug- development business within two years.
The company, known as Chi-Med, is "very aggressively working with everyone in the gastrointestinal space" on a licensing deal, Chief Executive Officer Christian Hogg said today in a telephone interview. He declined to name potential partners. Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories are among companies that sell products for ailments of the digestive tract.
The drug met the goals of a mid-stage trial in patients with ulcerative colitis, Hong Kong-based Chi-Med said in November. The medicine, known as HMPL-004, failed to achieve its primary goal in an earlier test in patients with Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. An initial public offering of its MediPharma unit would be the first of a biotechnology company out of China, Hogg said.
A partnership with Chi-Med would offer drugmakers a way to invest further in China, where the government plans to spend $125 billion to start a national health insurance system. The company, which develops drugs based on traditional Chinese medicine and botanical ingredients, also distributes pharmaceuticals in China and sells consumer-health products.
A licensing deal "will definitely be in 2010, and we're hoping sooner rather than later," Hogg said. The company has been invited to present data on the drug to a medical meeting in New Orleans in May, he said.
Drug PipelineJJ doesn't comment on such speculation, spokesman Bill Price wrote in an e-mail. "We don't comment on market rumors," Abbott spokesman Scott Stoffel wrote in an e-mail.MediPharma has at least three other treatments beginning human trials this year, including inflammation and cancer drugs. The unit also is developing compounds with Merck KGaA's Serono division, Eli Lilly Co. and Johnson Johnson, Hogg said."We're attracting a lot of interest from private equity and strategic investors," Hogg said. A MediPharma spinoff "is something we're deeply in discussions on now. It's more likely to be an IPO. We'd be quite unique in that we'd be the first biotech IPO out of China. I imagine we'd start that process in a year or two."Chi-Med's loss narrowed in 2009 to $8.7 million from $17.8 million a year earlier as sales rose 28 percent, the company said today. The shares rose 5 pence, or 2.5 percent, to 206.5 pence at 3:05 p.m. in London, giving the company a market value of 106 million pounds ($160 million). The stock has risen more than four-fold in the past year.Li's Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., with operations in ports, property, energy, telecommunications and retail, owns the majority of Chi-Med's shares.