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Fifteen years ago, one of China’s top scientists, Xiaodong Wang, co-founded what became the country’s most successful biotech in BeiGene, now a $38 billion company with over 40 clinical- or commercial-stage cancer drug programs. His next startup looks to tackle an even tougher challenge than cancer: neurodegeneration. With little publicity, his new company Sironax has grown into a 150-employee global company since its founding in 2017. It has raised a $200 million Series B round with backers including Baker Brothers Advisors, Singapore’s Temasek and F-Prime Capital; signed a major research deal with Novartis ; and advanced three drug candidates into the clinic. Its growth mirrors China’s biotech ascent and suggests what the country’s future may hold. The bet is that Sironax could become a BeiGene for degeneration in the brain, muscle and rare diseases. It wants to only develop first- or best-in-class ideas, rather than me-too programs, and is built to take promising drugs further into the clinic without the need for a larger partner. And like Wang’s earlier company, Sironax has international plans. BeiGene expanded globally, as reflected in its recent rebranding to BeOne Medicines and its redomicile in Switzerland. Earlier this year, Sironax hired Shefali Agarwal, a 20-year biopharma veteran of Pfizer, Tesaro and Epizyme, as its US-based CEO. Agarwal had never heard of Sironax when Ranjeev Krishana, a Baker Brothers investor on Sironax’s board, connected her to the company. She spent two months in China earlier this year with the team, observing a “completely changed” country for biopharma compared to a few years ago. “Now, innovation actually is happening in China,” Agarwal said in an interview from Sironax’s newly-opened US headquarters in Waltham, MA. Roughly 130 of the 150 employees are based in Beijing or Shanghai, which are the R&D engines of the company. Sironax has a growing team of about 20 in the US, alongside one- or two-person outposts in Australia and Switzerland. Sironax’s origins trace back to years of the Chinese government’s efforts to grow life sciences research. China recruited the return of scientific superstars like Wang, who had spent roughly 35 years in the US. Wang established and ran the Beijing-based National Institutes of Biological Sciences, or NIBS, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-esque organization that now funds over 1,000 researchers in China. Much of Sironax’s initial research came from NIBS. After starting BeiGene in 2010 with still-CEO John Oyler, Wang considered the growing burden of age-related degenerative diseases with an aging population in the future. “In 2050, more than 40% of people in China will be over 65 years old,” Wang said in an interview. “Never in human history you have this kind of society. Since I’ve been studying cell death for all these decades, I felt as if I’m in this position. If I don’t do something about it, who will?” Alzheimer’s, ALS, and dementia are among the toughest diseases to crack. Sironax can take on more risk than most startups because of China’s strength at cranking out molecules faster and cheaper than anywhere on Earth. “Here, you can build your pipeline by looking at different mechanisms of innovative drugs and take risks, because you know there’s another product coming,” Agarwal said. Sironax’s three clinical-stage programs are a RIPK1 inhibitor, a SARM1 inhibitor, and an NAMPT activator. Drugmakers like Sanofi have failed and bailed on RIPK1 . Wang said Sironax collaborated with Beijing’s neurology hospitals to assess human patients, comparing findings with old monkeys that have dementia. “They tried MS, they tried ALS, I would say, without a true scientific foundation,” Wang said on past RIPK1 failures. “This is still throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks.” Sironax’s strategy goes beyond being cheaper and faster at throwing spaghetti. The company hunts for unique biomarkers with every drug program. Its SARM1 program, for instance, has a proprietary, undisclosed biomarker for ALS, Agarwal said. “We need to pick the patients who will actually benefit from our drug,” she said. “That is our strategy for all of our drugs, not just SARM1.” Sironax expects data from patients, not just healthy volunteers, for all three clinical-stage programs by the end of 2026, Agarwal said. Additional programs will also enter the clinic “probably in a quarter or two,” she added. An IPO could be on the horizon as well, although Agarwal declined to disclose a timeline.