AstraZeneca-CICC Healthcare Fund Announces Completion of Hangzhou Sub-Fund Raising

November 12, 2022, China—At the 2nd Zhejiang Digital Health and Medical Industry Hangzhou Summit, the AstraZeneca CICC Healthcare Industry Fund announced that its Hangzhou Fund had officially completed fund registration. As the fund’s first regional vehicle, this fundraising round received strong support from multiple Hangzhou local government guidance funds, market-oriented fund-of-funds, and healthcare industry partners, including prominent investment institutions such as Hangzhou High-Tech Investment, Hangzhou Gongshu District State-owned Investment, Runxin Capital, and Tailong Investment.

The establishment of the Hangzhou Fund marks the commencement of the regional layout for the AstraZeneca CICC Healthcare Industry Fund. Currently, the total assets under management (AUM) of the fund exceed RMB 3 billion.

Focused on investment in the healthcare industry, the AstraZeneca CICC Healthcare Industry Fund was jointly initiated by AstraZeneca and CICC Capital. The fund concentrates on medical investment sectors including biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostic services, and digital health. By integrating AstraZeneca’s global industrial strengths with CICC Capital’s extensive experience in capital operations, the fund is committed to providing mutual empowerment to innovative enterprises and investment partners. Through collaboration with investors and industry stakeholders, it aims to expand the ecosystem of medical innovation and jointly promote the development of China’s healthcare industry.

In 2021, the fund completed its first close with over RMB 2.2 billion and subsequently invested in more than ten innovative healthcare companies, including CytoMed Therapeutics (cell therapy), Deepwise Healthcare (AI diagnostics), ZhiZhong Medical (digital health), and CareRay Medical (oncology intervention). Among these portfolio companies, Abbisko Therapeutics, which focuses on the research and development of novel small-molecule immuno-oncology and targeted oncology drugs, successfully listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2021.

In 2021, AstraZeneca’s Eastern China headquarters was officially established in Hangzhou. As a national benchmark for the digital economy, Hangzhou is at the forefront of exploring innovations in digital healthcare. In recent years, Hangzhou has been actively pursuing high-quality development of its biopharmaceutical industry through platform construction, financial support, industrial clustering, and supportive policies, with the goal of achieving a trillion-yuan scale for the city’s biopharmaceutical and health industries by 2030.

Leveraging AstraZeneca’s Eastern Headquarters and capitalizing on the Yangtze River Delta’s robust digital economy, the newly established Hangzhou Fund will aggregate premium domestic and international industrial and financial resources. By bridging government, industry, and investment stakeholders, the fund aims to facilitate the introduction of innovative biomedical ventures. Through tangible and beneficial industry-finance empowerment, it will accelerate corporate growth and propel Hangzhou, and Zhejiang Province at large, to become a globally influential innovation engine for smart healthcare.

Looking ahead, leveraging AstraZeneca’s regional headquarters presence in China, the fund will continue to expand its geographic coverage, foster deep integration between advantageous resources and the healthcare ecosystem, amplify the synergistic effects among government, industry, and capital, and inject new momentum into the iterative development of the regional health industry and economic growth.

Lei Wang, Executive Vice President of AstraZeneca and President of International Business and China, stated: “As one of the ‘three pillars’ of AstraZeneca’s commercial innovation, the AstraZeneca CICC Healthcare Industry Fund combines AstraZeneca’s resources and extensive experience in the global healthcare sector with CICC Capital’s rich expertise in capital operations. The fund is committed to fostering a thriving industrial ecosystem and helping local innovators make the critical leap from ‘technological success’ to ‘commercial success.’ We believe that, driven by policy, capital, technology, talent, and other factors, and through the joint efforts of the government, industry, and capital sectors, China’s pharmaceutical innovation is poised to achieve ‘overtaking on the bend,’ accelerating the global reach of ‘New China.’”

Shan Junbao, Chairman of CICC Capital and designated representative of the executive partner of the AstraZeneca CICC Healthcare Industry Fund, stated, “The establishment of the Hangzhou Fund marks a new chapter in the Fund’s regional layout. Hangzhou has long been at the forefront of healthcare informatization and internet integration, with its technological infrastructure having formed a comprehensive industrial ecosystem. Leveraging Hangzhou’s foundation in digital innovation, combined with the Fund’s extensive advantages in industry-finance empowerment, we aim for the Hangzhou sub-fund to become a successful model of regional cooperation. This initiative will support Hangzhou, and Zhejiang Province as a whole, in building a globally influential smart healthcare innovation engine, with the intention of replicating and promoting this model to more regions in the future.”

Chen Bing, Managing Director of the AstraZeneca CICC Healthcare Industry Fund and Vice President of AstraZeneca China, as well as Head of Strategic Cooperation and Business Development, stated: “Since its inception, the AstraZeneca CICC Healthcare Industry Fund has been committed to providing comprehensive, multi-level, bidirectional support throughout the entire lifecycle to portfolio companies and partners, helping them thrive in fertile ground. With the joint support of governments at all levels and institutional investors, the Hangzhou Fund will fully leverage development opportunities driven by the integration of industrial-financial resources and government guidance, enabling outstanding life sciences and health innovation enterprises to take root in Hangzhou and across Zhejiang Province. We look forward to this collaboration amplifying the synergistic effects of government-industry-investment linkage, accelerating the growth of Hangzhou’s life sciences and healthcare industry toward greater scale and strength.”

The AstraZeneca CICC Healthcare Industry Fund is a private equity fund jointly initiated by AstraZeneca and CICC Capital, focusing on investments in the healthcare industry. Leveraging AstraZeneca’s global industrial strengths and CICC Capital’s extensive experience in capital operations, the fund focuses on investment areas such as biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostic services, and digital health. It is committed to integrating industrial and financial resources, providing full-cycle, bidirectional empowerment to enterprises and investment partners, and jointly fostering innovative development in China’s healthcare industry.

AstraZeneca (LSE/STO/Nasdaq: AZN) is a science-led global biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the research, development, manufacturing, and marketing of prescription medicines, with a focus on oncology, rare diseases, and biopharmaceuticals including cardiovascular, renal, and metabolism; respiratory; and immunology. Headquartered in Cambridge, UK, AstraZeneca operates in more than 100 countries, with its innovative medicines benefiting millions of patients worldwide.

Since entering China in 1993, AstraZeneca has focused on therapeutic areas with the most urgent needs of Chinese patients, including oncology, cardiovascular, renal, metabolism, respiratory, gastrointestinal, vaccines and antibodies, autoimmunity, and rare diseases, bringing nearly 40 innovative medicines to the Chinese market. The company’s China headquarters and Global R&D China Center are located in Shanghai, with regional headquarters in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Wuxi, and Qingdao. Its production bases and logistics centers established in China now export pharmaceuticals to nearly 70 countries and regions worldwide. Today, China has developed into AstraZeneca’s second-largest market globally.

CICC Capital Operations Co., Ltd. is a wholly-owned private investment management subsidiary of China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC). As the operational platform for CICC’s private equity fund business, it centrally manages CICC’s onshore and offshore private equity investment fund activities. CICC Capital is one of China’s leading private investment management institutions, with a current portfolio of funds that includes RMB corporate private equity funds, funds of funds (FOFs), real estate funds, infrastructure funds, and USD corporate private equity funds.