Latest news with #MichelleXia
Time Magazine
08-05-2025
- Business
- Time Magazine
Michelle Xia
Akeso Biopharma, based in Zhongshan, China, has become one of the country's biggest breakout innovators this year. Led by co-founder and CEO Michelle Xia, the company has surged onto the international scene with drugs focused on cancer and immunology. In March, a phase 3 study published in The Lancet showed Akeso's ivonescimab outperformed Merck's blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab) pushing the FDA to fast-track its approval review of ivonescimab. And in April, the FDA approved Akeso's drug candidate penpulimab-kcqx—its first approval in the U.S.—for some types of head and neck cancer, four years after it was approved in China. Just a decade ago, this kind of success was unimaginable to Xia. When she started the company with her cofounders in March 2012, there was little drug innovation in China. 'We started from nothing,' she says. They built a lab, started drug discovery programs, moved products into development, manufacturing, clinical trials, and commercialization. In the past 10 years, they've tested dozens of candidates and brought seven drugs to market. They're currently eyeing cancer treatment cadonilimab, first approved in China in 2022, as their next drug to expand globally. The drug significantly improved survival rates for patients with cervical cancer compared to chemotherapy alone, according to results presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in November. The company's sudden global influence is indicative of China's spreading power in medicine. Akeso is running several phase 3 studies to expand the approval of ivonescimab in China, but it's also collaborating with Summit Therapeutics to bring ivonescimab to clinical trials in the U.S., Europe, and more. Despite the fraught geopolitical climate, Xia's optimistic about a future where treatments can be exchanged between countries. For example, drugs Akeso developed in China have already accrued lots of patient data, which can shorten the development and approval timeline in the U.S.. 'We can contribute innovation globally,' Xia says. 'I think that's very satisfying.'
South China Morning Post
28-04-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
China's Akeso, hailed as biotech's ‘DeepSeek moment', falls despite nod for cancer drug
Shares of Chinese cancer drug developer Akeso slumped on Monday despite the company receiving a second marketing approval from the mainland's drug regulator for an innovative medicine. Advertisement The shares tumbled 10.2 per cent to HK$88.90 in the afternoon, after surging 20.8 per cent in the previous four sessions on the back of a string of favourable clinical trial results announcements. The shares traded as high as HK$105.50 on Friday, 6.5 times their initial public offering price of HK$16.18 five years ago. Guangzhou-based Akeso said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange late on Sunday that the National Medical Products Administration had given it the go-ahead to market ivonescimab to treat certain non-small-cell lung cancer patients. 'This indication marks ivonescimab's second major approval,' the statement said, adding that the drug offered patients a safer ''chemotherapy-free'' alternative. Last May, regulators approved ivonescimab to treat non-squamous non-small-cell lung cancer patients. Akeso founder and CEO Michelle Xia. Photo: Handout The development of the new antibody drug was hailed by the mainland media last month as the biotech industry's ' DeepSeek moment ', as a clinical trial showed the treatment to be much more effective than a US-developed drug.
Wall Street Journal
12-04-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The Chinese CEO Who Believes Her Cancer Drug Can Beat Merck's Bestseller
Amid the worst U.S.-China trade clash in modern history, Michelle Xia thinks she has something Chinese that Americans will want. It isn't a $3 T-shirt or an electronic gadget. It is a cancer drug her company discovered—one that has made her the face of a rising pharmaceutical star.
Associated Press
28-03-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Akeso to Host 2024 Full-Year Financial Results and Corporate Update Call on Monday, March 31, 2025
HONG KONG, March 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Akeso Inc. ( ('the Company') will hold a conference call to discuss its full-year 2024 results on Monday, March 31, 2025, at the following times: 20:00-21:00 (Hong Kong/China/Singapore) 13:00-14:00 (London) 08:00-09:00 (New York) During the call, Akeso's management team, including: Dr. Michelle Xia (Chairwoman, President & CEO) Dr. Baiyong Li (Chief Scientific Officer) Dr. Bing C. Wang (Chief Financial Officer) will present an overview of the Company's financial performance for the full year of 2024 and provide insights into the outlook for 2025. The management team will also discuss recent developments, update on the progress of its key innovative pipelines—including bispecific antibodies cadonilimab (PD-1/CTLA-4) and ivonescimab (PD-1/VEGF), CD47 monoclonal antibody, ADC, and bispecific ADC —and outline its strategic direction moving forward. Call Details: Hosted by: Sean Wu, Morgan Stanley Research Language: English Registration: Investors can pre-register via: or contact your Morgan Stanley sales representative. About Akeso Akeso (HKEX: is a leading biopharmaceutical company committed to the research, development, manufacturing and commercialization of the world's first or best-in-class innovative biological medicines. Founded in 2012, the company has created a unique integrated R&D innovation system with the comprehensive end-to-end drug development platform (ACE Platform) and bi-specific antibody drug development technology (Tetrabody) as the core, a GMP-compliant manufacturing system and a commercialization system with an advanced operation mode, and has gradually developed into a globally competitive biopharmaceutical company focused on innovative solutions. With fully integrated multi-functional platform, Akeso is internally working on a robust pipeline of over 50 innovative assets in the fields of cancer, autoimmune disease, inflammation, metabolic disease and other major diseases. Among them, 23 candidates have entered clinical trials (including 11 bispecific/multispecific antibodies and bispecific antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). Additionally, 6 new drugs are commercially available, and 5 new drugs across 7 indications are currently under regulatory review for approval. Through efficient and breakthrough R&D innovation, Akeso always integrates superior global resources, develops the first-in-class and best-in-class new drugs, provides affordable therapeutic antibodies for patients worldwide, and continuously creates more commercial and social values to become a global leading biopharmaceutical enterprise.
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Chinese drug maker Akeso hailed as biotech's 'DeepSeek moment' amid US competition
Chinese drug maker Akeso, whose new cancer drug has outperformed a leading Western peer in clinical studies, is being hailed as the "DeepSeek moment" for China's drug industry, as biotech emerges as a new front in the escalating US-China tech war. Akeso's new immunotherapy drug targeting non-small cell lung cancer, called ivonescimab, allowed half of its patients to go 11.1 months without their condition worsening, a metric known as median progression-free survival (PFS), according to phase 3 clinical trial results the company published in The Lancet last week. The median PFS for pembrolizumab - the world's most popular cancer drug, sold by US pharmaceutical giant Merck under the brand name Keytruda - was 5.8 months by comparison, the study said. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. Akeso, which first unveiled the findings in September last year at an international industry conference, garnered increased attention in China recently after a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference introduced ivonescimab at the "two sessions" last week. Media outlets have referred to Akeso's cancer drug development as the Chinese biotech industry's "DeepSeek moment". Last month, Chinese start-up DeepSeek shocked the global tech industry with its high performance artificial intelligence (AI) models developed at a much lower cost than its peers. The breakthrough was seen as a sign of resilience by China's tech industry under tight US restrictions on AI chips. Akeso's global innovation centre in Shanghai. Photo: Handout alt=Akeso's global innovation centre in Shanghai. Photo: Handout> Ivonescimab is a type of immunotherapy known as PD-1 inhibitors, which are antibodies that help the immune system recognise and kill cancer cells. If the Akeso drug's efficacy is validated in more upcoming clinical tests, it means that China has gone from lagging behind the US by five years in the PD-1 field to leading by three years, Chinese venture capital fund Frees Fund wrote in a research report published on Wednesday. Akeso was founded in 2012 in Zhongshan, a city in China's southern Guangdong province. The company kicked off with a 20 million yuan (US$2.76 million) angel investment, and received rent subsidies and equipment support from the local government, founder and CEO Michelle Xia said in an interview with Hong Kong online outlet Speakout HK in 2021. Xia held senior positions at Western pharmaceutical companies including Bayer and Crown Bioscience before returning to China and establishing Akeso. Xia decided to start a drug discovery venture because China had virtually no pharmaceutical companies developing new drugs at the time, and it would take eight to 10 years for newly launched foreign innovative drugs to reach Chinese patients, and even then at high prices, according to the transcript of a speech Xia gave at her alma mater Sun Yat-sen University in June last year. Akeso went public in Hong Kong in April 2020, with its HK$2.58 billion (US$330 million) offering oversubscribed 639 times. The company, with several other cancer drugs in the pipeline, has licensed ivonescimab to US firm Summit Therapeutics for development and commercialisation in global markets in a US$5 billion deal. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
