HONG KONG, Sep 2, 2022 – (ACN Newswire) – Colorectal cancer (CRC) has become one of the main cancers threatening the health of human beings. In the United States and China, CRC has ranked among the top three cancers that leads to death.

CRC screening has been proven to be one of the most effective tools for preventing colorectal cancer. Research indicated that since screening was first recommended in 1980 in the United States, the incidence rate of CRC has dropped by 40%. Meanwhile, it's also important to follow the updated evidence, ensuring that the screening is suitable for the people who benefit most.

The onset of Disease Tends to be Younger
Latest research has indicated that 94% of newly CRC cases occur in adults over 45 years old. Among which, the number of newly onset and death cases occurring in individuals under the age of 50 has increased a lot. CRC diagnosis among younger adults is growing.

Therefore, National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has updated its guidance in 2021, suggesting that people at average risk shall conduct screening from the age of 45.

U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) also pointed out that all asymptomatic adults aged 45 years old or above are exposed to CRC risks. Even without high-risk factors, they're recommended to take CRC screening.

Although the incidence rate of CRC is as high as thyroid cancer and breast cancer, chance of treating CRC is better at an early age. It is very important to early find and treat the disease to ensure a higher survival rate. Research by the world-leading diagnosis and genetic health testing company Prenetics (PRE.O) showed that the 5-year survival rate of stage I and II CRC is up to 90% and stage III is 72.8%. It falls to 15.1% for stage IV CRC.

Despite the significantly higher survival rate in the early treatment of CRC, unfortunately nearly half of the CRC cases are detected in the advanced stage, leading to extremely difficult treatment. Lacking a convenient and highly effective detection method is the vital cause of this phenomenon.

Significant Reform of CRC Detection
CRC screening has always relied on invasive detection methods including colonoscopy. Since such detection may cause pain or discomfort, some patients refuse the screening.

With the rising popularity of genetic detection science, CRC screening has welcomed a significant reform. Currently, a non-invasive and at-home screening test product – ColoClear has been introduced by Prenetics and New Horizon Health to the Southeast Asia market, which can detect pre-cancerous lesions and early, middle, and advanced stage CRC in an effective way.

Combining advanced stool DNA technology with a fecal immunochemical test (FIT), ColoClear is easier, cheaper, and simpler and has high sensitivity, up to 96%, which is comparable to the traditional colonoscopy.

On top of ColoClear, CircleDNA, a home health diagnosis product of Prenetics that give over 500 test reports in 20 categories, which plays an important role in the early detection of cancer and other potential disease risks.


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HONG KONG, Sep 1, 2022 – (ACN Newswire) – As pharmaceutical reformation is underway, the importance of the innovative strength of biotech companies has become increasingly prominent, the entire industry has also formed a completely different pattern from ten years ago. Today, differentiation has also become the general trend of the industry.

As the interim results of Hong Kong companies have recently been announced, we might as well look for potential targets from the announcements that aim to differentiate themselves and truly bet on innovation. We found that Transcenta Holding (06628) might be worthy of attention. Transcenta has a strong focus on innovative research and development, well advanced in international clinical trials, while having multiple competitive advantages. Let's take a look at this Company.

Dr. Caroline Germa, Transcenta's new CMO, accelerates the development of differentiated pipelines

The core of differentiation in the industry is First-in-class and Best-in-class. In terms of pipelines, Transcenta has injected significant innovative attributes, developing the most innovative drugs such as FIC/BIC, highlighting the advantages of differentiated clinical strategy and development, which is expected to facilitate the pipeline product approval and commercialization and address the unmet medical needs.

Moreover, it can also be seen from the clinical trial overview that Transcenta's new drug development is more oriented towards global strategy, targeting the interests of the global market, and basically the product canddiates of the Company are being developed in parallel in both China and the US. This advantage is also based on the fact that the Company has a very efficient team in bothUS and China, with a deep understanding of the industry, covering all aspects of discovery, research and clinical trial development and manufacturing.

The majority of Transcenta's executives have a background of 15-20 years in leading pharmaceutical companies, with proven track record and a well-balanced combination of expertise spanning research, clinical development, manufacturing, strategic planning and financing. At the same time, the Company has a scientific advisory team of internationally renowned experts and industry elites. In the process of moving into the global "blue ocean", the Company is also gradually developing and growing, attracting more outstanding talents to join. Recently, the Company welcomed a new CMO, Dr. Caroline Germa, as the Company's Executive Vice President of Global Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer.

As a leader in oncology and drug development, Dr. Germa has a high reputation in the industry, and her personal strength has been proven by many achievements. Dr. Germa has worked for AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), Novartis and several other internationally renowned pharmaceutical companies, and has accumulated considerable industrial experience, also involved in the development and research of a number of blockbuster drugs including Ribociclib and Neratinibfor breast cancer.

Dr. Germa's joining Transcenta Holding will undoubtedly provide a great boost to the Company's innovative development. In the future, with her contacts in the pharmaceutical industry and her unique and profound understanding, she will better lead Transcenta's global expansion and make a significant contribution to enhancing the Company's shareholder value in the future. It is not difficult to find that the Company's team with high qualifications and deep background has laid a solid foundation for the global application and clinical development of its innovative pipeline molecules.

At present, Transcenta has built a diversified and risk-balanced pipeline of antibodies with best-in-class or first-in class potential in therapeutic areas with high unmet medical needs, including oncology, kidney and bone diseases. Most of these molecules are discovered and developed in house. Specifically, the Company's oncology product pipeline targets major cancer pathways which have potential synergistic mechanisms of actions for tumor indications, which is precisely the most differentiated design of the Company's oncology pipelines. Moreover, the Company has developed non-oncology pipeline strategy, which plays in a field facing less competition and reach high market potentials.

It is worth to mention that the drug discovery technology of Transcenta Group is particularly impressive. Based on the unique IMTB antibody discovery platform, the company has developed a number of antibodies targeting various pooled sites above a particular target, thereby expanding the selectivity of its drug candidates. The Company has generated and is developing oncology products such as TST001, TST005, TST003 and TST010 through the IMTB technology platform. In the future, more valuable innovative drugs will be discovered and filed for global registration, helping Transcenta Group to become a leading global biotechnology company.

Rapidly advancing product pipeline, leading the world in clinical progress

The strength of Transcenta Holding is not only reflected in the layout and research and development of innovative drugs, but also in the Company's ability to execute and facilitate clinical trials. In the first half of 2022, the Company actively advanced its product pipeline and achieved remarkable results. In particular, the Company's flagship product, TST001, ranked second in the world in terms of clinical progress and will soon enter Phase III clinical trials.

Claudin18.2 has relatively high expression in gastric cancer, pancreatic cancer, esophageal cancer and bile duct cancer, and TST001 has high biological activity, affinity and NK cell activity, and has ideal efficacy and safety. It has a considerable commercial application prospect. At the same time, the Company has also developed a specific antibody for companion diagnostics and will use this Claudin18.2 immunohistochemical assay to support international clinical trial registration. The Company is also well ahead of schedule and at the forefront of the world in this area.

In developing TST001, Transcenta has, on the one hand, continued to explore multiple tumor types. On the other hand, the Company is also experimenting with TST001 combination regimens, and its clinical progress is likewise world-leading. Let's keep an eye on its mid-term phase 2 clinical data for TST001 and chemotherapy combination in frontline gastric cancer patients as the company disclosed it will be published soon in a major European clinical oncology conference. This could be important to understand the potential of TST001.

Not only that, the Company's other pipelines are also progressing smoothly, including the bifunctional humanized antibody TST005 targeting both PD-1/PD-L1 and TGF-beta pathways, the candidate product TST002, a humanized sclerostin mAb for the treatment of osteoporosis, and a high affinity humanized monoclonal antibody TST003 (FIC) and TST004, a humanized MASP-2 mAb candidate for kidney diseases. It is worth mentioning that the Company's first-in-class targeting Gremlin1(TST003), a preclinical asset with antitumor activities in multiple difficult to treat tumor models were published in the international oncology authoritative journal "Nature Cancer". In addition, the Company has also developed a series of relatively early pipeline products, which further enriched the Company's product pipeline. As these candidate products gradually enter the clinic stages and are successively approved in the future, the Company's intrinsic value will gain more impetus.

Actively promoting CDMO business to fully realise the source of income and reduce expenditure

In addition to product development, Transcenta Holding has also forward-looking in the layout of commercial production. It can be seen from the Company's results announcement that Transcenta has established a complete CMC and production platform, both for early cell line process development and GMP mass production systems, which are designed by the Company and met international standards.

Transcenta Holding utilises a novel integrated continuous bioprocessing platform (ICB) for developing robust production processes, formulations and analytics, manufacturing drug products throughout product life cycle. The advantages of the Company's ICB platform are significant, as its capacity is more than 10 times higher than the traditional Fed-batch flow addition process, and its cost has been significantly reduced by almost 50%. In May 2022, Transcenta had successfully passed audit by the European Union Quality Person (QP). This combination of quality and cost advantages supports the clinical studies and registration of the Company's candidate products worldwide.

In addition, Transcenta has leveraged its CMC capabilities and the potential value of its ICB platform to further expand its CDMO business. While the CDMO business has enabled the Company to achieve open source and cost savings, it has also attracted the attention of international high-quality partners by virtue of the high-quality industry reputation accumulated in the client, and further expands international cooperation. The Company has been developing and collaborating commercially with Merck for an industry-first disposable flow-through polishing system, and maintains a domestic leading position in the field of perfusion technology.

Summary

All in all, the interim results announcement of Transcenta Holding has many highlights and the Company's competitive advantages are distinct. Whether it is drug discovery, clinical development, or commercial production, it has strong strength in all aspects. We believe that with the successful development and commercialization of the Company's innovative and differentiated products, Transcenta will achieve leapfrog development and is worthy of long-term attention.


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HONG KONG, Aug 29, 2022 – (ACN Newswire) – Suzhou Basecare Medical Corporation Limited ("Basecare Medical" or the "Company", together with its subsidiaries, the "Group", stock code: 2170), an innovative platform of genetic testing solutions for assisted reproduction in China, officially announced the unaudited consolidated interim results for the six months ended June 30, 2022 (the "Reporting Period").

During the Reporting Period, the Group recorded revenue of RMB68.6 million, a year-on-year increase of 36.7% compared to H1 2021. This increase was primarily driven by the revenue related to PGT laboratory increased by 53.4% from RMB26.6 million to RMB40.8 million, and the revenue increased from nil to RMB354,000 related to the male-focused laboratory, mainly contributable to the sales of the flow cytometer. The gross profit margin was outstanding during the Reporting Period. The gross profit of the Group increased by 36.0% to RMB30.2 million for the six months ended June 30, 2022, with a gross profit margin of 67.9% from PGT-A. Basecare Medical has transformed from a single product company to a comprehensive scenario solutions provider in the assisted reproduction industry, providing multi-scenario solutions including PGT laboratory-related solutions, male-focused laboratory-related solutions, and cryopreservation room-related solutions. Through a parallel business model consisting of both R&D and marketing, Basecare Medical has built a closed-loop business chain based on actual clinical needs, providing custom-made scenario solutions for customers, resulting in better customer satisfaction.

Focus on technological innovation to satisfy the evolving needs of the assisted reproductive market

By adhering to the "well-crafted product" concept, Basecare Medical's R&D expenses increased significantly by 99.5% year-on-year to RMB45.5 million during the Reporting Period. Basecare Medical has established a complete series of testing kits in the pipeline of genetic testing kits, which is based on next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. Meanwhile, the PGT-A kit from Basecare Medical is China's first third-generation IVF genetic testing kit approved by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA). The sales revenue of PGT-A kits was RMB16.4 million, with a gross profit margin of 67.9%. Meanwhile, the other two PGT products, PGT-M and PGT-SR kits are also under development. The PGT-M kit is the first and only product of its kind in China that has completed the registration test, and the PGT-SR kit is the world's first original technology to achieve effective testing of chromosomal balanced translocations through the high-throughput sequencing platform, which obtained the national invention patent technology and may become the first standardized commercial product in this series of products in China with the potential for mass clinical application. After the PGT-M and PGT-SR kits are approved for registration by the NMPA, respectively, Basecare Medical expects to further consolidate its dominant position in the third-generation IVF genetic test kit market in China, well ahead of the Company's competitors in the potential competition.

Beyond test kits, Basecare Medical has developed a number of innovative devices and instruments that can improve workflow in molecular genetic laboratories using its kits, as well as the industrial chain layout of embryo cryopreservation equipment, and has provided intelligent and automated integrated solutions for clinical trials to improve the Company's competitiveness.

R&D and marketing develop synergistically, the commercialization process shows a steady upward trend

Although a significant portion of products was directly sold to hospitals and testing institutions, Basecare Medical also sold testing kits to distributors, who in turn sold the Company's products to hospitals. With an outstanding marketing team, Basecare Medical provides services to key customers such as third-generation IVF licensed hospitals and testing institutions, which are a major component of the Company's customers. The Company's marketing team is also responsible for promoting products to hospitals through academic marketing activities and interactions with KOLs and other industry professionals. At present, Basecare Medical has collaborated with over 200 medical institutions across the PRC, including 60 leading reproductive centers.

With the first NMPA-approved PGT kit in China, Basecare Medical enjoys first-mover advantages in building and solidifying its sales channels and customer base. Basecare Medical plans to focus its commercialization strategy on key hospitals. The Company will increase the coverage and penetration of hospitals licensed to conduct PGT and develop stronger relationships with them to enhance customer stickiness and lay the foundation to offer other products to them in the future. Moreover, Basecare Medical plans to expand the share of wallet in these hospitals by offering comprehensive solutions, as well as offering new products for meeting other medical needs in these institutions.

Occupy the full reproductive cycle and be a leading global medical technology company

To accomplish the vision of becoming a leading global medical technology company, Basecare Medical will continue to capture and solidify PGT-A's sales channels and maintain the established customer relationships while accelerating the clinical registration process of PGT-M and PGT-SR kits, to rapidly establish a comprehensive product pipeline of the third-generation assisted reproduction to occupy the full reproductive cycle. Regarding the instrument pipeline, Basecare Medical intends to develop automated and intelligent hardware to upgrade the industry infrastructure and maintain technological leadership by leveraging the advancements of global leaders.

It is expected that a peak in the approval and delivery of the Company's products and pipeline will be achieved in the coming two to three years. Basecare Medical will satisfy the evolving needs of the assisted reproductive market, further develop scenario solutions in assisted reproduction to better serve the infertile and eugenic public, and create more value for customers.

About Suzhou Basecare Medical Corporation Limited

Suzhou Basecare Medical Corporation Limited is a third-generation IVF clinical solution provider in China and the first listed IVD company in the field of assisted reproduction (stock code: 2170.HK). It is committed to the product R&D and clinical application of gene technology in the field of reproductive health. Basecare Medical has been adhering to the "well-crafted product" concept, adhering to the industrialization road of independent R&D and localization substitution, and has built multi-scenario solutions for assisted reproduction covering PGT laboratories, andrology laboratories, and frozen storage rooms. The PGT-A (pre-implantation chromosome aneuploidy testing) kit, a class III medical device product independently developed by the company, has won China's first "special approval for innovative medical devices", filling the clinical gap of third-generation IVF genetic testing kits in China.

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