ATLANTA —
As the race to create new anti-obesity and MASH treatments heats up, an emerging biotech with roots in China and the US is looking to bolster its financial position to accelerate development.
Eccogene will look to raise about $150 million in its proposed Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing, CEO Jingye Zhou told
Endpoints News
on the sidelines of this year’s ObesityWeek confab.
The typical range for a biotech listing on that bourse is about $100 million to $200 million, Zhou said.
The biotech revealed its
pitch for an IPO on the HKEX
last month. The regulatory process will likely take a few months, Zhou said.
Dozens of Chinese drug developers — and some biotech startups that are based outside of that burgeoning region — have filed for HKEX listings this year as the IPO environment in that market has
gained momentum
. More than 45 companies have submitted their plans so far this year, according to an Endpoints tally.
Eccogene has a team of about 40 employees, mainly preclinical scientists, in Shanghai. More than a dozen staffers in the US work on clinical trials and business development, Zhou said.
The company’s oral GLP-1 candidate serves as the backbone of AstraZeneca’s foray into the obesity field. The UK drugmaker paid Eccogene $185 million upfront in 2023 to get the ex-China rights to the candidate, codenamed AZD5004/ECC5004. The experimental small molecule is in Phase 2b, and Eccogene aims to co-commercialize the drug in Greater China, Zhou said.
Eccogene’s pipeline is mainly made up of oral small molecules. The Ecco part of the biotech’s name stands for economics, Zhou said. “We would like to develop medicines that are really affordable to a very broad patient population globally,” he said.
That includes a THR-beta agonist called ECC4703. The asset was recently cleared by the FDA for a Phase 2a in MASH, Zhou said. The MASH field has seen a resurgence this year with strong sales from Madrigal’s Rezdiffra and a label expansion for Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy.
The biotech also plans to test the asset as a weight management drug, the CEO said.
Eccogene is also in early clinical development with an SSAO inhibitor (ECC0509) for osteoarthritis pain and MASH.
Beyond those two programs, Eccogene has small molecules targeting GIP and the
ever-popular amylin
.
Outside of its small molecules, it is also dabbling in peptides. The biotech has a preclinical poly-agonist peptide called ECC10216 that goes after GLP-1, GIP, amylin and calcitonin all in one drug, Zhou said.
