Deals and Financings

GuaHao.com, a Hangzhou online healthcare portal, completed a $394 million financing round, led by Hillhouse Capital and Goldman Sachs (see story). GuaHao helps patients make appointments and payments, along with other healthcare services. The company will change its name to WeDoctor, adopting a name similar to WeChat, the Tencent messaging app. Tencent also participated in the funding. According to media reports, GuaHao/WeDoctor will spend $300 million to build an internet diagnosis and treatment platform, and another $150 million to build five regional surgery centers. 

Genovate Biotechnology (TWO: 4130), a Taiwanese drug company, has begun construction of a China insulin manufacturing facility in Changzhou Industrial Park, whose total investment may reach $1 billion (see story). The company hopes to become China’s largest supplier of insulin, supplanting the three international pharmas that currently control the market. Phase 1 of the project, which got underway this week, is a relatively modest $55 million facility that will house a one-ton fermentation production line, and is expected to be completed in 2018. 

CASI Pharma (NSDQ: CASI), a US-China biopharma, raised $25 million in a secondary offering, which it will use to fund clinical trials (see story). CASI is currently conducting four Phase II trials of ENMD-2076, an oral Aurora A/angiogenic kinase inhibitor, in the US and China. Headquartered in Maryland, CASI has R&D operations in Beijing. The financing was led by a China investment fund manager affiliated with the same management team as CASI’s largest shareholder, IDG-Accel China Growth Fund III, L.P. 

Ativa Medical of Minneapolis, a medical diagnostic device company, completed a $15 million B round, much of it from China investors (see story). The company is developing the Ativa micro lab device, which miniaturizes larger, more expensive central lab blood test devices into a countertop system for use in a clinic. Results are available in five minutes. The financing was led by Ping An Ventures, the VC arm of the large China insurance company, and joined by Hermed Capital, a partnership between Fosun Pharma (SHA: 600196; HK: 2196) and SK Group of Korea; and DiAn Diagnostics (SHZ: 300244), an operator of China central labs. 

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