Driven by personal losses, major unmet needs and a desire to diversify from the crowded oncology market, Fosun Pharma is making high-stakes bets in neurodegenerative diseases to fuel its evolution into a true global multinational company.
In a recent interview with Fierce Pharma, Fosun Pharma co-president, CEO of innovative medicines division, Xingli Wang, M.D., Ph.D., detailed how the company leveraged two recent deals to quickly build up its portfolio in Alzheimer’s disease as part of a multi-step roadmap to establish Fosun’s independent commercial capabilities in the U.S.
To Fosun Pharma, its interest in neurodegenerative disorders began with a large—and growing—patient population that still lacks treatment options. In China alone, Fosun estimates about 17 million patients are living with Alzheimer’s. With an aging population in the country, that number is projected to grow significantly bigger in the coming decades.
“It’s just about anyone in our close proximity—our friends, colleagues, one of their family members—[who has been] affected by Alzheimer’s,” Wang said. “That’s one of the drivers we’re all quite passionate about.”
Building an Alzheimer’s pipeline quickly
To outsiders, Fosun Pharma’s most eye-catching foray into Alzheimer’s came near the end of 2025, when the company shelled out 1.4 billion Chinese yuan (about $200 million) to take control of Green Valley Pharmaceuticals and its controversial Alzheimer’s drug oligomannate, or GV-971. The move puzzled many investors. Green Valley had just failed to renew the drug’s conditional approval in China, and questions remain today around its original phase 3 data and mechanism of action.
“We’re trying to build up our portfolio from early discovery to the clinical stage as quickly as possible in order to consolidate our portfolio [in Alzheimer’s],” Wang said.
Despite historical controversies, Wang was convinced by real-world data.
Since oligomannate’s Chinese nod back in late 2019, Green Valley has collected data from about 3,500 real-world patients in two prospectively designed data sets spanning over 72 weeks, which Wang said have shown “very consistent benefits” for the drug.
“The chance of success, I think it’s a lot higher,” Wang said. “If you’re looking at any asset, if you only have phase 2 data, your chance of success is much lower than this one.”
Green Valley had its chance to put doubts to rest through another phase 3 trial. But the COVID-19 pandemic derailed that plan as the company struggled to fund the study and enroll patients efficiently. The company then thought real-world data could convince Chinese regulators, but that didn’t pan out, leading to the halt of its market authorization.
But even after the trial was aborted with nearly 300 patients enrolled, Wang recalled that doctors were asking about potential access to the drug at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease conference in 2023. That feedback piqued Wang’s interest in the drug.
Now, the drug’s future rests on a newly redesigned phase 3 trial in China. Upon taking over Green Valley, Fosun expanded the study from 1,300 patients to 1,900 and extended the trial period to about one year, with extended observation follow-up to 72 weeks. The drug’s original conditional nod was primarily based on 36 weeks of data.
Fosun now expects the new trial to finish in 2028, with a potential regulatory filing in 2029.
Besides a large amount of data, Wang was also swayed by oligomannate’s oral administration. Existing anti-amyloid antibodies, Eisai’s Leqembi and Eli Lilly’s Kisunla, are injected or infused. Wang, who lost his mother to Alzheimer’s, suggested that giving Alzheimer’s patients injections can be challenging.
Following that oral drug line of thinking, Fosun in May doubled down on the Alzheimer’s space, signing a global option agreement for AriBio’s phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) inhibitor, AR1001. The Chinese pharma paid the Korean biotech a $60 million option fee and will pay up to $180 million in upfront and regulatory milestones if it decides to exercise that option upon receiving results from an ongoing global phase 3 trial. The global option agreement builds on a previous China licensing deal.
Even though the drug had failed in phase 2, Wang kept a close eye on its phase 3 trial, called Polaris-AD. As the study progressed, Wang noted a very low dropout rate and fast enrollment speed. At the time, about 95% of patients who completed the 52-week treatment period per the primary endpoint design chose to stay on the extension period, according to Wang. That could suggest patients were responding to treatment, even though they’re blinded to the exact drug they’re receiving.
Besides, adverse events associated with the candidate are rare, according to Wang. Viagra, a popular erectile dysfunction drug, is also a PDE5 inhibitor.
Still, calling Fosun a “smaller player in the global pharmaceutical” world, Wang said the company is being very careful reading into the data so far and has therefore not fully in-licensed the drug yet.
Together, oligomannate and AR1001 are meant to cover a broader Alzheimer’s patient population. While real-world evidence suggests oligomannate is more effective in patients with moderate disease severity, AR1001 is targeting those with mild cognition impairment, Wang said.
In addition to those assets, Fosun in January partnered up with AI-powered drug designer Insilico Medicine to develop an early-stage, brain-penetrant NLRP3 inhibitor. While the initial indication is Parkinson's disease, Wang sees potential for the asset in Alzheimer’s as well.
“The MOA of Alzheimer’s is multiple, including neuroinflammation, synaptic plasticity, neural growth and, very famously, the amyloid deposition aggregation,” Wang observed. “We want to cover different pathways. We are trying to look into three different mechanisms to get assets to the pipeline to make sure we will win.”
China-based multinational pharma
To Wang, the AriBio deal means more than just obtaining an asset. It underpins Fosun Pharma’s strategy to establish a foothold in the global market, especially the U.S., as part of its goal of becoming what Wang called a “CMNC”—a China-based multinational company. Compared with vying for a slice of the immensely crowded oncology space, Wang hopes Fosun Pharma could gain an edge by taking on higher-risk—but less competitive—central nervous system diseases.
AR1001 will provide Fosun access to an established global clinical network of about 200 sites across nine countries, Wang noted.
“Our capabilities to run global trials in the U.S. or do commercial is really not much,” Wang said. “For the future, if we want to move GV971 to the global [market], we need this type of experience and the familiarity now.”
AR1001 represents a golden opportunity for Fosun to hone its skills in the U.S., the exec contends.
“It is a specialty drug but can be marketed at the general practitioners’ level,” Wang noted, drawing on his experience at Novartis watching the Swiss pharma navigate the launch of Entresto. Just how prescriptions of the blockbuster heart med are not concentrated among cardiologists, Wang expects that even though neurologists may handle the initial diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, primary care doctors and geriatricians will be the main prescribers of AR1001.
For a company like Fosun, “it will be a good start to build up our commercial capabilities,” he said.
For GV971, Wang said Fosun is focused on getting its China phase 3 done before deciding its global development plan, but he suggested that the company may aim for a narrower indication, potentially in those with emotional disturbances, a subset of the patient population that appears to respond best to treatment in the real world.
Fosun Pharma already has a presence in the U.S. Henlius Biotech, a subsidiary of Fosun, has clinical operations and regulatory affairs capabilities thanks to its development of biosimilars. The Fosun Pharma U.S. headquarters has two arms, meanwhile, including an established medicines team and an innovative drug branch.
For the past few years, Fosun has been preparing for what could be its first innovative drug launch in the U.S.—the China-approved PD-1 inhibitor serplulimab. The proposed initial indication is extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC), where PD-L1 inhibitor therapy—but not PD-1 inhibitor treatment—has been approved, a niche market that Wang said could give Fosun “a small taste” of novel drug marketing.
On top of the phase 3 Astrum-005 trial, which showed serplulimab beat placebo in its chemotherapy combinations, the company recently completed a U.S. bridging study called Astride, which compared serplulimab to Roche’s Tecentriq, both in combination with chemo, in about 200 patients with treatment-naïve ES-SCLC. Discussions with the FDA about a potential filing are ongoing with the goal to submit for approval this year, Wang said.
Fosun began mapping out the U.S. commercial landscape for serplulimab about three years ago, recognizing that the hurdle will be greater for a China-based company marketing an innovative medicine in the U.S. for the first time than for Big Pharma. The key, Wang said, is “culture fitness,” for which Fosun has been setting the stage.
Using a PD-1 inhibitor as the initial wedge into the U.S. market is the same playbook used by Fosun’s Chinese peers Hengrui Pharma and Innovent Biologics. But according to Wang, that strategy of pursuing some of the most popular targets may soon be something of the past for Fosun’s oncology work.
“Our strategy is, at this stage, for oncology, we do ourselves in-house development,” Wang said. “We’re looking for best-in-class or first-in-class assets […] we feel we have enough of the fast followers in oncology, and we want to make something bigger.”
Meanwhile, the company has been investing in new modalities in oncology. In 2024, Fosun gained full control of its former cell therapy joint venture with Gilead Sciences. With the liberty to pursue new projects of its own interest, Fosun rebuilt the unit’s R&D capabilities and started developing platforms such as in vivo CAR-T and automated cell therapy production through a collaboration with CellBri.
It also ventured into radioligand therapy, recognizing that the technology requires a high entry bar that few players could manage. While its initial program targets PSMA, which has been established by Novartis’ blockbuster Pluvicto, Fosun is exploring its own proprietary nanoparticle radioactive therapy approach, according to Wang.
Fosun Pharma’s globalization plan takes many shapes. Like its Chinese peers, the company has out-licensed assets or engaged in R&D collaborations with foreign companies. These include a potential $1.9 billion deal with Pfizer covering Fosun’s GLP-1 agonists and a $645 million pact with Expedition Therapeutics focused on a DPP-1 inhibitor for inflammatory lung diseases.
Through a recently formed five-year partnership, Wang got to work with his former Novartis bosses, Joe Jimenez and Mark Fishman, M.D., who co-founded the venture capital firm Aditum Bio. Under that deal, Aditum’s startup Clavis Bio will nominate targets, and Fosun will help design the drug, which could then be co-developed by the two firms.
As Wang sees it, the deal allows Aditum to leverage Fosun’s productivity in China, while his company may benefit from the partner’s sophistication in target selection.
“In order to do [innovative] medicine, selection is more important than execution,” Wang said, “because if you make the right choice, even if you’re slower, you still win.”