As LianBio strikes more deals to bring new drugs to China, the company is installing a new CEO: Yizhe Wang, Ph.D., who will arrive next Monday after leading the team that brought Eli Lilly’s COVID-19 antibody, bamlanivimab, to an emergency nod. Wang fills a vacuum left by LianBio’s founding CEO Bing Li, who departed quietly earlier this year.
Wang led global brand development at Lilly’s oncology unit and in 2020, also served as the global platform lead for anti-COVID therapy. Before that, he led Lilly’s biomedicines and oncology units in China and held various roles at GlaxoSmithKline over a 15-year tenure.
“Yizhe is a strategic leader with decades of experience developing, launching and managing the product lifecycle of transformative drugs in China, the U.S. and Europe,” said Konstantin Poukalov, executive chairman of LianBio and managing director at Perceptive Advisors, in a statement.
“With his proven leadership guiding late-stage assets to market in China, LianBio is well positioned for our next phase of growth as we continue to advance our pipeline and partner with leading global biopharmaceutical companies to expand their reach into China and other Asian markets," Poukalov added.
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LianBio emerged from stealth last August with the dual mission of bringing much-needed new drugs to China and helping U.S. biotechs expand their operations into Asia. It started out with three assets licensed from MyoKardia—now part of Bristol Myers Squibb—and BridgeBio Pharma and has since added programs from Pfizer and other companies.
Wang arrives two months after LianBio struck its latest partnerships and added Yi Larson as chief financial officer to the team. In March, Larson arrived from Turning Point Therapeutics where, as CFO, she led financing and dealmaking, including out-licensing the company’s lead asset to Zai Lab, another Chinese biotech that uses the licensing model.
The same month, LianBio teamed up with ReViral to develop and commercialize an antiviral treatment for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. And it partnered with Tarsus Pharmaceuticals on a treatment for two eye conditions, meibomian gland disease and demodex blepharitis, in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.
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The upfronts for both deals were modest at about $15 million each, but the milestones could total more than $300 million.
In October, LianBio raised one of the biggest venture rounds of 2020, banking $310 million in a crossover round co-led by RA Capital and Venrock in the U.S. and CMG-SDIC in China.