ChinaBio Today -- Christmas week put its usual choke hold on biopharma news in the US, slowing the flow down to a trickle. But China stepped into the near void, making up the difference by delivering stories about investments, deals and progress on new drug deals. In ChinaBio® Today, we published an exclusive interview with the two companies that jointly won the “Most Promising Company” for drug development at the recent ChinaBio® Investor Forum. The two companies were ProteLight Pharmaceuticals of China and BioAMPs International of Denver, CO (see story). Together, they own the worldwide rights to V13K, a peptide-based antibiotic currently in pre-clinical development. As a peptide, V13K attacks the membrane of the pathogen, instead of targeting a metabolic pathway as a small-molecule drug would do. The goal of the new mechanism is to address the unmet need of drug resistant infections. Two companies have an unusual method for handling the international development of a new drug class, showing innovation in their business plan as well as their highly original scientific research.
