Harbour BioMed Secures $4.575B Strategic Deal with AstraZeneca, Including Equity Investment

The MNC that understands China the most strikes again!

On March 21, AstraZeneca China announced a $2.5 billion investment plan to establish the sixth global strategic R&D center in Beijing and reached multiple significant R&D and production collaborations.

In this investment landscape,Harbour BioMedIs an existence that cannot be ignored. On the same day,The two parties, with a BD deal having a potential total transaction value of $4.575 billion, have set a new record for China's innovative drug BD transactions in 2025. Moreover, through the form of "licensing collaboration + equity investment," they have contributed another case of an MNC deeply engaging in China's innovative drug sector.

It is worth noting that this is not Harbour BioMed andAstraZenecaThe first collaboration does not mean it is the first time for Harbour BioMed to partner with an MNC. Over the past few years, thanks to its globally scarce technology platform and outstanding R&D capabilities, the molecules developed by Harbour BioMed have been favored by pharmaceutical companies many times.

NextPharma Global New Drug Database by PharmaCube shows,To date, Harbour BioMed has reached 45 external collaborations, including 27 with overseas pharmaceutical companies, involving three multinational corporations (MNCs): AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and AbbVie.

Through these collaboration deals, Harbour BioMed not only demonstrated its R&D capabilities but also, while securing sufficient R&D funding, further strengthened its global innovation ecosystem and enhanced its influence in the global innovative drug market.

What Did AstraZeneca Spend a Huge Sum of Money On?

The cooperation between Harbour BioMed and AstraZeneca is quite noteworthy.

Specifically, AstraZeneca has reached cooperation agreements with three biotech companies: Harbour BioMed, Yuan Si Sheng Peptide, and Kangtai Biological. Notably,Harbour BioMed is not only AstraZeneca's sole partner in the multi-antibody field this time but also a "frequent contact" in AstraZeneca's China BD landscape in recent years.

NextPharma Global New Drug Database by PharmaCube shows that, from 2022 to date, AstraZeneca has reached 14 BD collaborations with 11 Chinese innovative pharmaceutical companies. Harbour BioMed tops AstraZeneca’s list of BD deals in China with three collaborations and a potential total transaction value exceeding $4.5 billion.

However, compared with the previous two collaborations,The new cooperation between the two parties is no longer limited to simple license out authorization for development, but moves towards long-term, in-depth binding and resource sharing.

Upon closer inspection, the main content of this collaboration revolves around platform technology and projects. According to the agreement, AstraZeneca will obtain multi-project licensing rights across various therapeutic fields based on Harbour BioMed's proprietary Harbour Mice® fully human antibody technology platform. Additionally, AstraZeneca will secure optional licensing rights for two preclinical immunology projects and will nominate more targets for Harbour BioMed to develop next-generation multispecific antibody therapies. AstraZeneca may exercise its options to advance these projects into the clinical development stage.

At the same time, both parties have left ample room for future cooperation. According to the agreement, both sides can choose to include more projects in the scope of cooperation within the next five years, and the agreement term can be extended for another five years with the consent of both parties.

At present, in order to better promote the cooperation project and more cooperation between the two parties, Harbour BioMed will also build an innovation center in Beijing, China with AstraZeneca.

As a result, Harbour BioMed will receive a total of $175 million in upfront payments, near-term milestone payments, and option exercise fees for additional new projects, as well as up to $4.4 billion in R&D and commercial milestone payments, plus tiered royalties based on future net product sales.

In addition to this cooperation payment, AstraZeneca will also subscribe to 9.15% of newly issued shares of Harbour BioMed at a price of $1.38 per share (approximately HK$10.74 per share), which represents a 37% premium over the closing share price on that day.The proceeds from AstraZeneca's subscription this time are approximately 1.05 billion US dollars (about 8.19 billion Hong Kong dollars). Thus, AstraZeneca has also become one of the major shareholders of Harbour BioMed.

Looking back, there have not been many cases where MNCs have been so deeply involved in China's pharmaceutical innovation, such as Amgen and BeiGene, MSD and Kelun-Biotech, etc.

As a result, all of the above collaborations of Harbour BioMed are highly notable within the industry.

Why does AstraZeneca keep showing interest?

On the surface, AstraZeneca's renewed partnership with Harbour BioMed naturally builds on the foundation laid by the previous two collaborations.But ultimately, the scarcity and hard power of the technology platform are the key reasons why AstraZeneca is willing to bet repeatedly.

In 2016, Harbour BioMed was newly established and, with the help of ADV Capital and Legend Capital, acquired Harbour Antibodies BV in December of the same year. This acquisition secured its fully protected transgenic mouse platform for fully human antibody development (including HCAb and H2L2). Subsequently, Harbour BioMed built the Harbour Mice® platform for fully human transgenic mice, the HBICE® (Harbour Immune Cell Engager) platform, and the single B-cell cloning and screening platform.

And whether it is any of the above platforms, Harbour BioMed has reached a globally leading level.

Its globally scarce fully human mouse platform, Harbour Mice®, can generate fully human, affinity-matured monoclonal antibodies and novel antibodies with excellent drug-like properties. While the technical challenges have resulted in very few mature heavy-chain antibody platforms worldwide, the HCAb Harbour Mice® platform developed by Harbour BioMed is the world’s first transgenic mouse platform to generate and apply heavy-chain antibodies (HCAb) for therapeutic antibody discovery.

In terms of R&D and CMC, Harbour BioMed's technology platform enables efficient antibody discovery, reducing the cycle from the original 1-2 years to 6-8 months, and increases the success rates of both R&D and CMC, leading to an overall success rate from drug discovery to market that is higher than the average level.

It is precisely the construction of these three major platforms and technical strength that has given Harbour BioMed the confidence for future self-research and external licensing cooperation. After the establishment of NanoBio in 2022, it upgraded and derived a 2.0 version of the core technology platform system based on the original technology platform, including a new generation of immune cell engager bispecific antibody platform, an integrated antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) development collaboration platform, an mRNA delivery bispecific antibody platform, and an HCAb+CAR high-throughput screening platform.

At present, with the aforementioned technology platform in hand, Harbour BioMed has taken a commanding lead in the field of antibody development.

This is also the reason why AstraZeneca has once again chosen to collaborate with Harbour BioMed and "bundle" multiple preclinical molecules in one go. Such platform "hard power" is undoubtedly AstraZeneca's strategic lever to unlock the next emerging field.

Accelerate the Layout of Global Innovation Ecosystem

At present, by securing a large order from AstraZeneca, Harbour BioMed has taken a step forward in the layout of its global innovation ecosystem.

Since the establishment of Harbour BioMed's Nanoray Biotech in 2022, Harbour BioMed has officially embarked on building an ecosystem. At that time, in order to better convert the advantages of its technology platform into market value, Nanoray Biotech took on the task of empowering global biopharmaceutical innovation through its core technology platform and creating an innovative ecosystem. And it has indeed lived up to expectations.

Less than a month after its establishment, Harbour BioMed reached two collaborations with Moderna and Dragonfly respectively, which serves as the best testament to its innovative monetization capabilities.

With the addition of the important leverage of DuoNa Bio, Harbour BioMed has also accelerated its pace in building a global innovation ecosystem. Only in the bispecific antibody field, Harbour BioMed has already established over 50 global partnerships, accounting for more than half of the top ten companies’ collaborators worldwide. Moreover, multinational corporations (MNCs) occupy a significant proportion within its global partner network. According to PharmaCube statistics, Harbour BioMed has reached five collaborations with three MNCs: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and AbbVie.

Among them, the first two collaborations with AstraZeneca have become benchmarks in BD.

In 2022, Harbour BioMed licensed out HBM7022, a TCE bispecific antibody targeting CLDN18.2/CD3, to AstraZeneca for $350 million. It was not until 2024 that TCE bispecific antibody BD deals gained significant momentum. In other words, this deal by Harbour BioMed was remarkably forward-looking.

Such vision is also reflected in the fact that shortly after the establishment of Harbour BioMed, the company upgraded and integrated its technology platform, and caught the ADC wave in 2023. That year, Harbour BioMed's ADC products successively gained favor from several star pharmaceutical companies, and HBM9033 was licensed to Seagen (Pfizer), a leading ADC company. The latter regarded this as an important milestone for the Harbour Mice® platform and its business development within the ADC ecosystem.

Harbour BioMed's Second Collaboration with AstraZeneca Occurred in 2024. At that time, Nanobody Biologics' preclinical monoclonal antibody project was licensed to AstraZeneca for over $600 million, becoming one of the largest preclinical pipeline licensing deals by a Chinese biotech company since 2024. At the time, this deal once drove Harbour BioMed's stock price up by 19% during intraday trading, with the market providing positive feedback and affirmation through a significant rise in the stock price curve.

Whether it is the first two collaborations or this latest collaboration exceeding $4.5 billion, AstraZeneca has placed its bets on Harbour BioMed's preclinical products. In fact, during the overseas expansion trend of the past two years, MNCs' preference for China's innovative assets has shifted towards earlier stages.On the one hand, this represents a balance of risk and reward for both parties involved in the collaboration; on the other hand, such a choice also reveals the MNC's optimism about the potential of early-stage assets in China.

Indeed, under the strict standards of MNCs pursuing "global innovation," Harbour BioMed's ability to continuously collaborate with MNCs multiple times in recent years undoubtedly demonstrates the value of its technology platform. Meanwhile,The partnership deals reached over the past three years have not only generated continuous cash flow to support Harbour BioMed's R&D efforts but also planted seeds of value explosion for the company in cutting-edge fields such as next-generation antibody therapies and ADC.

All these factors will eventually translate into its second growth curve. Previously, Harbour BioMed's earnings forecast estimated that the total profit for the whole year of 2024 would be between 7.3 million yuan and 22 million yuan. Meanwhile, during this period, Harbour BioMed achieved a cash profit of 220 million yuan, setting a new historical high.

It can be said that Harbour BioMed has gradually found its own bright path.

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