As biotech IPOs hit a record low in the US, more than 40 Chi­nese bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies have filed to go pub­lic so far this year. That’s more than four times the num­ber that have sought a Nas­daq or New York Stock Ex­change list­ing.

It’s the lat­est sig­nal of Chi­na’s boom­ing biotech scene, which is in­creas­ing­ly viewed as a go-to place for West­ern star­tups and large drug­mak­ers to li­cense or buy new med­i­cines at a time when the biotech sec­tor has stalled in the US.

In the first three quar­ters of 2025, at least 42 bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies in Chi­na have filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Ex­change, ac­cord­ing to an End­points News tal­ly. In that same nine-month stretch, on­ly about a dozen biotechs have at­tempt­ed to go pub­lic in the US.

Roche's $2.4 bil­lion deal for 89bio last month came af­ter a se­ries of in­creased ac­qui­si­tion of­fers, a deep dive in­to the MASH biotech's third-par­ty man­u­fac­tur­ers, and two years of re­la­tion­ship build­ing.

No­tably ab­sent, though, were bids from any oth­er drug­mak­ers, ac­cord­ing to new SEC doc­u­ments that re­vealed some de­tails of the deal dis­cus­sions.

It's not un­com­mon for there to be just one bid­der in an M&A process, but it's re­cent­ly been more com­mon among larg­er takeovers, when a phar­ma gi­ant has a spe­cif­ic ther­a­peu­tic gap or loom­ing patent loss to fill. The year's biggest bio­phar­ma ac­qui­si­tions — In­tra-Cel­lu­lar ($14 bil­lion), Verona ($10 bil­lion) and Blue­print ($9.5 bil­lion) — had no com­pet­ing bids, ac­cord­ing to reg­u­la­to­ry doc­u­ments.

Plus, news about Hansa Bio­phar­ma, On­coC4, Ley­den Lab­o­ra­to­ries, Anavex, Van­qua Bio, Bolt Bio­ther­a­peu­tics, Ab­b­Vie, Asabys Part­ners and Aliath Bioven­tures:

🏛 ​​Taysha may seek ap­proval of gene ther­a­py ear­li­er than ex­pect­ed: The com­pa­ny said it could ex­pe­dite a fil­ing for its Rett Syn­drome gene ther­a­py us­ing re­sults from a 6-month in­ter­im analy­sis. The piv­otal study is ex­pect­ed to in­clude 15 pa­tients with a pri­ma­ry end­point ex­am­in­ing de­vel­op­men­tal mile­stone changes at one year. Taysha's shares TSHA jumped near­ly 50% on Thurs­day. The com­pa­ny's stock has more than dou­bled since the be­gin­ning of the year. It now has a mar­ket val­ue of about $1.2 bil­lion. — Lei Lei Wu