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Another US biotech has emerged with rights to experimental medicines that were created by China-based drug developers. On Wednesday, Austin, TX-based Ollin Biosciences debuted with $100 million in funding to create new ophthalmology treatments from two Chinese biopharmas, Innovent and VelaVigo. The company’s backers include life-science heavyweights ARCH Venture Partners, Mubadala Capital and Monograph Capital. Ollin is the latest Western biotech to build itself around assets from China’s bustling drug development landscape. It formed two years ago with the mission of becoming an asset-centered ophthalmology company that carries forward other drug developers’ candidates, CEO Jason Ehrlich said in an interview with Endpoints News . “For us, it’s really around finding the best scientific and clinical opportunities where we think there’s room for innovation,” Ehrlich said. Ollin’s board includes Travis Murdoch, another biotech executive with recent experience doing the China-to-US strategy. He leads Braveheart Bio, which got rights to a cardio drug from Hengrui earlier this month. China assets have made up more than a third of the pharma industry’s licensing deals through August of this year, according to bankers at Raymond James. Some of Ollin’s $100 million has already gone toward its two licensing deals, Ehrlich said, and the startup will look for more candidates to bring in-house from around the world. It has a broad remit across ophthalmology, including retinal diseases, cornea-focused conditions, glaucoma and other areas. “There’s been this Cambrian explosion of technologies for evaluating ophthalmic images,” Ehrlich said, making the space even more appealing for drug development. But gene therapies and dry eye disease are areas that Ollin won’t touch, he said. With two deals under its belt, Ollin looks to take on Roche’s Vabysmo in wet age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema, as well as Amgen’s Tepezza and other biotechs in the thyroid eye disease field. Ehrlich spent about a decade at Genentech, eventually leading their late-stage development for programs including Vabysmo. Ollin’s drug, OLN324, is currently in a Phase 1b trial pitting it against Vabysmo. The experimental drug is a VEGF/Ang2 bispecific antibody from Innovent Biologics that will read out in the first quarter of 2026, the company said. The US-based Phase 1b has completed enrollment, with about 75 treatment-naive wet AMD patients and about 75 patients with DME, Ehrlich said. That represents the leading causes of vision loss in the elderly, he noted. “We’re testing the drug in this proof-of-concept study in both of the big indications, which will help us map out the path forward from here,” Ehrlich said. In thyroid eye disease, Ollin has ex-Greater China rights to a preclinical treatment candidate from its other China partner, VelaVigo. VelaVigo has an undisclosed stake in Ollin and the potential for up to $440 million from its US partner, it told Endpoints exclusively in April. That drug is a TSHR/IGF-1R bispecific, codenamed OLN102. It’s slated to enter human studies next year. “The idea is that by bringing these two pathways together, can we potentially have a similar, if not better, efficacy, but a nicer safety profile?” Ehrlich said. The CEO said the biotech could explore multiple paths for clinical and commercial development. Other drug developers have commercialized on their own in ophthalmology, with Regeneron getting its first big break in this market, and Apellis being a more recent example, Ehrlich said. Ollin is named after the Aztec word for forward movement, Ehrlich said. The ancient symbol includes an eye. And its pronunciation sounds like “all in.” “There haven’t been a lot of asset-centered development engines in ophthalmology,” Ehrlich said. “We’ve seen that in immunology, virology, oncology and many other areas.”