Exclusive Interview with Wang Jinsong of Harbour BioMed: 2022, Amid Public Scrutiny, Was Actually a Year of Breakthroughs

Yesterday, Harbour BioMed released its 2022 annual report.

That year, Harbour BioMed found itself at the center of public scrutiny. Amid the capital winter, a series of moves by this Hong Kong-listed Chapter 18A company became the focus of industry attention:

In April, Harbour BioMed and AstraZeneca reached a global out-licensing agreement for the bispecific antibody drug HBM7022;

In October, Harbour BioMed and CSPC Pharmaceutical Group reached an agreement on the Greater China rights for batoclimab;

In the same month, the company announced the termination of the Phase III clinical trial of tenaciccept, with no further enrollment of new subjects;

In November, Harbour BioMed rolled out a series of announcements in quick succession: it signed a licensing and collaboration agreement with Moderna; announced the establishment of Nona Bioscience; reached a deep strategic partnership with WuXi Biologics regarding an industrialization base in Suzhou; and saw Nona Bioscience successively enter into collaboration agreements with Dragonfly Therapeutics and Kelun-Biotech.

In particular, the collaboration with WuXi Biologics has easily created an external impression that 2022 was an extremely challenging year for Harbour BioMed. The company’s series of strategic initiatives have been perceived as self-rescue tactics to cope with the short-term winter, or even as drastic measures akin to “cutting off one’s arm to survive.”

What Kind of Year Was 2022 for Harbour BioMed? Ahead of the Annual Report Release, VCBeat’s New Medicine Section Conducted an Exclusive Interview with Dr. Wang Jinsong, CEO of Harbour BioMed.

When asked whether 2022 was the most difficult year for Harbour BioMed, Wang Jinsong gave a negative answer.He believes that “in 2022, Harbour BioMed had not only continuous cash inflows and funds raised before and during its IPO, but also business development (BD) revenue from both domestic and international markets, making it far less challenging than the difficult first two or three years after its establishment.”

This answer is unexpected yet entirely logical. As a representative of the second generation of biotech companies established in China around 2015, Harbour BioMed has fully experienced both the upswing and downswing cycles of China’s biopharmaceutical industry. To date, Harbour BioMed has undergone financing, gone public, continuously expanded and enriched its new pipeline, built and iterated its technology service platforms, and advanced flagship products into late-stage clinical development. In accordance with inherent development patterns, even without a capital winter, the company was poised to enter a harvest period within these two years, while simultaneously facing market scrutiny and validation.

It is difficult to say whether Harbour BioMed’s strategic moves last year were driven by the external capital winter or were simply a natural progression as the company reached a certain stage of development.What is clear is that this wave of strategic adjustments coincided with the industry cycle, leading external observers to see only the challenging side of Harbour BioMed.

In fact, Wang Jinsong believes that “2022 and 2023 were the highlight years for Harbour BioMed.”

Two weeks after VCBeat’s interview with Wang Jinsong, Harbour BioMed released its 2022 annual results.

According to the 2022 annual financial report released yesterday, Harbour BioMed’s revenue surged 8.5-fold year-on-year to $40.7 million in 2022, with multiple notable out-licensing partnerships achieved during the reporting period. Meanwhile, the company continued to increase its R&D investment, with R&D expenses reaching $135 million in 2022, a significant year-on-year increase of 26.1%. The company filed 93 patent applications, 30 of which were granted; as of December 31, 2022, 201 patent applications were still under examination.

These achievements are attributable to Harbour BioMed’s strategic initiatives, which have focused on two key areas: out-licensing of products and commercialization of its technology platforms.

In terms of out-licensing, Harbour BioMed has not only reached a global out-licensing agreement with AstraZeneca for the CLDN18.2xCD3 bispecific antibody HBM7022, but also entered into an agreement with CSPC Pharmaceutical Group regarding the Greater China rights to batoclimab. These collaborations have provided Harbour BioMed with ample cash flow support for its new drug R&D.

In terms of the commercialization of technology platforms,The newly established Nona Biosciences represents a transformative adjustment for Harbour BioMed.On December 13 last year, Harbour BioMed announced at its 2022 Investor Day that the company would structure its overall business around two core pillars: Harbour Therapeutics and Nona Biosciences. Among these, Nona Biosciences will leverage the company’s robust platform technologies and specialized expertise to provide clients with one-stop preclinical solutions from Idea to IND (I to I).

Nona Biosciences has become the engine driving Harbour BioMed. This platform is no longer a standalone transgenic mouse platform; instead, it has expanded from its core to foster innovation in the antibody sector, evolving from monoclonal and bispecific antibodies into the “Antibody Plus” era. By integrating new technologies such as single B-cell cloning, it has developed into a comprehensive technology portfolio platform.Currently, Nona Biosciences’ innovative R&D platform has been validated and applied by more than 50 multinational pharmaceutical companies, biopharmaceutical firms, and academic research institutions, including Moderna, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Of course, 2022 was also a year of contradictions for Harbour BioMed.Although Harbour BioMed has secured orders and partnerships through its robust innovative technologies and products, external observers view the conclusion of the Phase III clinical trial for TNX-102 and the establishment of a manufacturing handover collaboration with WuXi Biologics at its Suzhou industrialization base as events standing in contrast to its peak moments.

Ups and downs are the norm in the biopharmaceutical industry. However, during an industry-wide downturn, any move tends to be magnified or even misinterpreted. Pessimism has enveloped the entire sector, and following recent events, the development prospects of Harbour BioMed have been portrayed in an overly negative light, giving rise to considerable market noise.

In November 2022, Harbour BioMed successively announced a series of strategic adjustments and positive developments, sparking further speculation from external observers. During the interview, when asked about the underlying reasons for concentrating these adjustments in November, Wang Jinsong responded, “Every event has its own lifecycle. Each business development (BD) deal or clinical trial requires meticulous and thorough preparation and follows its own pace. The cluster of announcements in November was partly coincidental, but also the outcome of our extensive long-term preparations.”

Wang Jinsong emphasized to VCBeat, “2022 was a year of change for Harbour BioMed, but these changes did not happen passively overnight; rather, they were part of the company’s overall strategic plan established in its early days.”

Taking the strategic partnership between Harbour BioMed and WuXi Biologics as an example, Wang Jinsong responded that such normal business interactions would have occurred even without a capital winter: “This is part of Harbour BioMed’s overall strategic planning and an inevitable choice to focus on our core competencies. As Harbour BioMed’s product pipeline moves closer to commercialization, particularly with batoclimab having entered the mid-to-late stages of Phase III clinical trials at that time, we conducted a careful assessment and believed that at this stage,As a startup, if Harbour BioMed were to devote substantial resources and effort to commercialization, it would actually dilute our core competency in technology development and divert the team’s time and energy from the global development of upstream products.”

The fact is that, following a series of strategic adjustments, the positive news for Harbour BioMed in late 2022 even continued into 2023:In January, HBM Alpha Therapeutics, an incubated enterprise of Harbour BioMed, completed its seed financing round; in February, Nona Biosciences entered into a collaboration agreement with Mythic Therapeutics, a developer of novel antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) therapies, and Harbour BioMed signed a licensing and collaboration agreement with Cullinan Oncology for the B7-H4x4-1BB bispecific antibody; in March, the Company announced positive results from the Phase III clinical trial of batoclimab for the treatment of generalized myasthenia gravis.

While outsiders were merely observing from the sidelines, viewing Harbour BioMed’s series of moves with uncertainty, the company was, in fact, continuously adjusting and operating at high speed.

Harbour BioMed, since its establishment over six years ago, has witnessed and experienced the cyclical ups and downs of China's biopharmaceutical industry.While strategies have been continuously adjusted, one consistent focus has remained: the iteration of our technology platform and collaboration based on it.

This is one of the unwavering core principles at Harbour BioMed. “Many initiatives are not something we have just started today; rather, they are part of a long-term strategy built upon our greatest strengths and steadfast commitments.” Wang Jinsong’s dedication to innovation extends beyond products and technology to encompass business models as well. “We develop technology as a commodity to ensure sustainability and scalability, thereby supporting the entire process from product development to subsequent commercialization; this is one of the ways to realize returns on innovative technologies.”

Nearly seven years of persistence culminated in the establishment of Nona Bioscience.

In fact, to some extent, Nona Biosciences even predates the establishment of Harbour BioMed. Its foundational origins stem from Harbour Antibodies, a Dutch antibody platform company acquired by Harbour BioMed in 2016.

Initially, the platform’s business was relatively singular, focusing solely on technology licensing without the capability for novel drug development. Following the establishment of Harbour BioMed, the technology platform has undergone continuous optimization and iteration. The emergence of the second- and third-generation Harbour Mice has significantly enhanced R&D efficiency and technological maturity, leading to the current expansion of the Harbour Mice platform.^®Fully Human Antibody Transgenic Mouse Platform, and the Next-Generation Proprietary Immune Cell Engager Bispecific Antibody Platform HBICE^®as well as integrated technology platforms such as Antibody Plus.The platform’s production capacity has surpassed the level required solely to support Harbour BioMed’s internal new drug R&D, and is fully capable of supporting antibody discovery and screening for the entire industry.

More importantly, the platform’s core underlying technology has been continuously validated by the Harbour BioMed team. Currently, the company has advanced more than 14 projects generated from this technology platform to the IND-enabling and clinical development stages, making it one of the few platforms globally whose technology has been proven mature through clinical trials.

“Nona Biosciences can be described as an upgraded version of our earliest Dutch company. Originally, it was merely a simple licensing platform for transgenic mice, but it has now evolved into a foundational technology that not only supports Harbour BioMed but also empowers entrepreneurs and scientists worldwide to develop innovative drugs.”

The establishment of Nona Biosciences became one of Wang Jinsong’s happiest moments in 2022.

“It’s like a baby we’ve raised together has grown up. If Harbour Antibodies was a child just starting kindergarten back then, it now seems ready to be sent off to university, leaving home to contribute to society.” Wang Jinsong likened Nona Biosciences to an aircraft carrier: “After more than six years of development, this aircraft carrier will achieve comprehensive growth, with therapeutic modalities expanding from ‘antibody-plus’ to ADCs and cell therapies, and indications extending beyond oncology. In 2023, Nona Biosciences will demonstrate its value in a multidimensional and holistic manner.”

In our conversation with Wang Jinsong, we could constantly sense his steadfastness in entrepreneurship, which is also the ethos he has imbued in Harbour BioMed.

Back in 2016, it took a full year to establish Harbour BioMed. In terms of its entrepreneurial model, Wang Jinsong aimed to drive new drug development by acquiring the Dutch company Harbour Antibodies and leveraging its technology platform. This meant that Harbour BioMed’s innovative drug projects had to be built from the ground up.

This entrepreneurial model was an “outlier” in China’s biopharmaceutical industry, which at the time favored a fast-follow approach. Most investors were unable to accept Harbour BioMed’s then seemingly highly forward-looking business model and were unwilling to bear the associated unknown risks.

However, Wang Jinsong’s composure and resilience lie in his determination to find investors who truly understand him.“If our sole aim had been to raise funds or if we had focused only on short-term gains, establishing Harbour BioMed would have been much easier. During the project initiation phase, although we faced shortages of capital and workspace, we remained committed to seeking investors interested in long-term partnerships, thereby laying a solid foundation for the company’s sustained development after its establishment.”

Strategic focus has also become a keyword in the development of Harbour BioMed.

“Everyone knows that innovative drug development has a high failure rate, but more people prefer to talk about their success rate.”In fact, every company understands that setbacks are inevitable when pursuing genuine innovation. This is also why, in the early stages, many perceived Harbour BioMed’s product pipeline as progressing relatively slowly. Because we are engaged in true innovation, with no precedents to follow for each endeavor, we must explore each step carefully, which necessarily slows our pace. However, once the system is established, our speed accelerates significantly and far surpasses that of competitors, making it impossible for them to catch up. This is our current status.”

As Wang Jinsong stated, it was precisely through the revisions and improvements made after numerous setbacks that Harbour BioMed was ultimately able to identify the optimal targets, the most advanced innovative technology modules, and the best pathways and operations.

Now, Harbour BioMed has found the balance between stability and speed,Operational efficiency has become one of Harbour BioMed’s secret weapons.“We are now able to advance two projects into clinical trials every year, not only because they feature global first-in-class concepts, but also because each of our clinical entries is the first in the world.”

This rhythm has evolved into a "Harbour speed," characterized by rapid external collaborations, swift iterations of its technology platform, and accelerated clinical development.

In 2023, “greater innovation and faster pace” became the key development themes for Harbour BioMed.

In addition to continuing to expand and strengthen Nona Biosciences’ business, Harbour BioMed has entered a true era of commercialization as the Phase III clinical trial of batoclimab for the treatment of generalized myasthenia gravis was declared successful. This milestone is a testament to the company’s operational efficiency. In the first half of this year, Harbour BioMed will focus on submitting the Biologics License Application (BLA) for batoclimab, marking the imminent arrival of its harvest period.

Harbour BioMed’s New Chapter Is About to Begin.