Heavyweight deals in the cardiovascular sector! Professional investment institutions are bullish, and the market size is promising.

With a cold snap coming in and 2021 reaching its final quarter, the capital markets are not yet wintery, with several major investment deals in the biotech sector still being concluded in the fourth quarter of the year.

Public information shows that the domestic and international cardiovascular investment and financing market is vivacious just this past October. Including the domestic medical supplies industry, well-known enterprise Wego Group’s focus on cardiovascular and neurological intervention field Wego intervention announced the completion of a billion-yuan Series A financing, led by several professional investment institutions to follow the investment. The market response is enthusiastic.

In addition, Cardurion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company based in Boston, Massachusetts, also announced late last month that it had received an investment of up to $300 million from Bain Capital. A company whose mission is reportedly to transform the science of cardiovascular signalling pathways into groundbreaking therapies for the treatment of cardiovascular disease, with innovative cardiovascular drug candidates including PDE9 inhibitors and CaMKII inhibitors. The company’s innovative cardiovascular drug candidates include PDE9 inhibitors and CaMKII inhibitors.

These two heavyweight investment deals in the cardiovascular sector have energised the entire capital market and are a positive signal from the biotechnology sector’s investment and financing market that the industry’s growth remains highly anticipated.

What is the future of the cardiovascular disease sector with an active investment and financing market?

Indeed, the cardiovascular disease market’s development has been driven by substantial clinical demand and has been growing faster in recent years.

What is cardiovascular disease?

Cardiovascular diseases are generally referred to as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, a generic term for ischaemic or haemorrhagic diseases of the heart, brain and body tissues caused by hyperlipidaemia, blood viscosity, atherosclerosis, hypertension.

According to the analysis of the official China Cardiovascular Disease Report 2020, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease in China has been on a continuous rise in recent years due to an ageing population, unhealthy diet and lack of exercise. Today, there are approximately 330 million cardiovascular patients in China, a large base of patient groups with a continuously growing unmet clinical need.

The mortality rate of cardiovascular disease in China is the highest, and the population of cardiovascular patients is large and has a high mortality rate. There is a trend of low age, rapid growth in low-income groups, and individual aggregation, which is one of China’s significant medical and health problems.

In terms of market size, the market size of China’s cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease treatment sector in 2019 is approximately RMB 212.2 billion, accounting for approximately 12.99% of the overall size of China’s pharmaceutical market.

The market size of cardiovascular diseases will grow from RMB158.8 billion in 2015 to RMB212.2 billion in 2019, with a CAGR of 7.51%. It is expected that the market size of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in China will grow to RMB247.7 billion by 2024, with promising development prospects.

Overview of the financing market in the cardiovascular sector — professional institutions are bullish.

In recent years, the investment and financing market in cardiovascular disease-related areas has been quite active, with industry statistics showing that 330 financing events took place in the medical device sector in 2020, including 33 in the cardiovascular track. With a total financing amount of $6.5 billion, accounting for 13%, as one of the most significant medical device market segments, capital market investment in cardiovascular interventional devices increases.

For example, High Tide Capital has a large holding in several A-share listed companies in the cardiovascular sector in China currently, including MICROPORT CARDIOFLOW MEDTECH CORPORATION, Venus Medtech and Peijia Medical. On 31 December 2020, Clear Pine Capital and Lansing Asia led the most significant financing in the cardiovascular sector in 2020 — over RMB 1 billion in Series C financing for Beijing Med-zenith Medical Technology Ltd. in Series C financing; and Sequoia China has also participated in several consecutive rounds of financing in medical AI high-tech company Digital Kun Technology to explore innovation opportunities in the cardiovascular sector.

In addition, statistics show that 12 neuro-interventional high-value consumables research and development and manufacturing companies in the industry have received financing totalling over $1.1 billion as of August this year.

At the same time, biotech companies in the cardiovascular field have also started a listing boom. In July this year, Zylox-Tonbridge Medical Technology Co., Ltd. was successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; in August, Shanghai HeartCare Medicalwas also listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On the other hand, A-share listed companies such as MICROPORT CARDIOFLOW MEDTECH CORPORATION,Peijia Medical and Venus Medtech have also started their double-track layout, while more mid-waist companies are joining the competition through several rounds of significant financing.

Overall, with the rapid development of the industry and the growing clinical demand, the cardiovascular field is also receiving increasing attention in the capital market. With the favour and support of many professional investment institutions, the future development prospects are promising.

Global PE giant Blackstone Group makes a strong entry, targets cardiovascular disease in the first battle.

It is worth noting that global private equity behemoth Blackstone has made extensive investments in the cardiovascular industry in recent years, which can be considered a trend. In October 2018, Blackstone announced the acquisition of Clarus, a life sciences investment firm, launching its life sciences division and formally entering the healthcare investing market.

The first shot fired by Blackstone the following year was aimed at the cardiovascular sector: in March 2019, Blackstone injected US$250 million to announce a joint venture with Novartis, Anthos Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on advancing next-generation targeted therapies for patients with high-risk cardiovascular disease.

In January 2020, Blackstone and Abingworth-backed global drug development company SJF Pharmaceuticals announced a collaboration with PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialisation of new therapies for cardiopulmonary disease, to develop PB2452 (the antiplatelet treatment Ticagrelor’s reversal agent). PB2452 is understood to reverse the antiplatelet activity of Ticagrelor in situations of significant bleeding and emergency surgery.

On 9 March 2020, Blackstone announced that it would acquire a majority stake in HealthEdge, a healthcare software developer. HealthEdge is dedicated to providing next-generation core administrative processing system (CAPS) solutions for healthcare companies, according to Blackstone’s website.

The company has developed a cloud-based software platform that helps healthcare companies use new business models, reduce overhead costs and effectively address the business needs arising from the evolving healthcare economy.

On 13 April 2020, Blackstone announced that it had entered into a broad strategic partnership with RNAi therapeutics company Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Under the partnership, Blackstone will provide up to US$2 billion in funding to support Alnylam in advancing innovative technologies. This strategic investment of up to US$2 billion sets a record for the highest investment in biopharmaceuticals.

Alnylam is understood to be leading the development of innovative RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics, with its pipeline of RNAi therapeutics development already covering four areas: genetic drugs, cardiovascular, metabolic diseases, infectious liver diseases and central nervous system/eye diseases. A portion of the deal amount invested by Blackstone was dedicated to supporting the development of Alnylam’s two cardiovascular drugs.

HKND develops YB1 innovative thrombolytic drug to enter the cardiovascular field as industry boom develops.

Against this backdrop, biotechnology companies are also actively pursuing the cardiovascular disease market. Taking the thrombolytic drugs market, the fastest-growing segment in cardiovascular disease, as an example, many innovative biotech companies are accelerating their presence in this high-potential segment, relying on their high-tech R&D capabilities.

The Oncolytic bacterium YB1, developed by HKNK, can carry the thrombolytic enzyme rt-PA to accumulate at the thrombus site and be released at a fixed point, solving the problem of the short half-life of traditional thrombolytic drugs.

Our self-developed tumour oncolytic bacterial product YB1 uses tumour hypoxia-specific targeting technology to deliver a variety of therapeutic agents, including antibodies, mRNAs and proteins, as carriers, targeting and releasing them to the tumour centre, thereby achieving a tumour oncolytic effect.

Combining YB1 with urokinase in the treatment of various thrombotic diseases is an essential technological extension of YB1 beyond tumour immunotherapy, and the company has already laid out several YB1 thrombolytic products in the pipeline, including our first-generation targeted thrombus ablation product: YB1-rt-PA, which is primarily distinguished by the release of urokinase (Urokinase) at the location of This enables the quick and precise release of thrombolytic medicines.

We also have two other YB1 thrombolytic drug products under development, YB1-rt-DE and YB1-rt-PL, which are YB1 combined with fibrinolytic enzymes, and we hope to make further progress soon.

The industry market has seen much new blood, and we hope that more innovative drug products like YB1-rt-PA will emerge in the future to bring more benefits to patients with cardiovascular diseases.