Startups raised millions to in-license drugs to China. Then the model fell apart

Every com­pa­ny name tells a sto­ry. Lian­Bio’s is in the Chi­nese char­ac­ter on its lo­go: 聯 — which means to link, to unite, to con­nect.

Launched in 2020 by Amer­i­can in­vest­ment firm Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors, Lian­Bio in-li­censed ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­pies from US and Eu­ro­pean biotechs to de­vel­op and com­mer­cial­ize in Chi­na. As it wrote in its IPO pa­pers a year lat­er, “It is our vi­sion to serve as a gate­way to Chi­na for West­ern bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies fo­cused on the large ad­dress­able mar­ket un­locked by” new ad­vances and re­forms.

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