Since 2025, the Hang Seng Index has rebounded strongly, attracting global investors' attention to Hong Kong's new stock market. Huanli Biotechnology (Qingdao) Co., Ltd. is steadily advancing its Hong Kong IPO process—following completion of CSRC filing in December 2024, Huanli Biology obtained Hong Kong Stock Exchange acceptance for its updated prospectus on August 15, 2025, officially launching its bid to become the "first PDGF stock" in Hong Kong, targeting the wound healing market valued at over one hundred billion yuan.

Founded in 2012, Huanli Biology is an innovative biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing multifunctional therapies for wound healing, specializing in PDGF (Platelet-Derived Growth Factor) drugs. As an unprofitable biotech enterprise, Huanli Biology's "hard technology" foundation is evident from its R&D investment. The prospectus shows that over the past 13 years, the company has continuously increased R&D spending, with 2024 R&D expenses reaching 91.326 million yuan, a significant increase of over 120% from 39.9 million yuan in 2023. R&D expenditure in the first five months of 2025 also reached 32.1 million yuan, with core product development costs accounting for up to 83.5% of operating expenses during the same period.

Notably, the company has no share buyback or gambling agreement "burdens," and based on its PDGF technology platform and pipeline progress, has secured backing from renowned institutions including Ding Hui Investment and Qingdao High-Tech—this capital lineup provides important endorsement for its Hong Kong listing.

Hundred-Billion Blue Ocean Awaiting Development: PDGF Technology Opens Multi-Scenario Possibilities

According to Frost & Sullivan data, China's wound healing market size was 95.7 billion yuan in 2024, expected to grow to 104 billion yuan in 2028, and further increase to 118 billion yuan by 2033.

Facing the still blue-ocean wound healing market, Huanli Biology has established a rich R&D pipeline covering 14 wound healing indications including burns, diabetic foot ulcers, fresh wounds, pressure sores, radiation ulcers, and dry eye syndrome, demonstrating enormous market potential. The company owns 10 competitive candidate products, of which 7 are PDGF drugs. Its core product Pro-101-1 is China's fastest-developing PDGF candidate drug for burn treatment, about to enter Phase III clinical trials, expected to launch in 2027 to capture market opportunities first. Pro-101-2 focuses on diabetic foot ulcers, currently in Phase II clinical trials, expected to complete this stage in Q2 2027, targeting 2030 launch.

According to the prospectus, PDGF is one of the growth factors secreted by platelets after injury, capable of promoting new blood vessel formation, regulating inflammation, and stimulating cell proliferation and migration, ultimately accelerating wound healing. Its potential application prospects are extremely broad: PDGF will not be limited to clinical treatment of burns and diabetic foot, but is expected to be applied to various wound healing scenarios, especially post-surgical medical settings. According to Frost & Sullivan reports, PDGF drugs will be widely applied in nearly 20 other indications across multiple medical specialties, such as general surgery (varicose ulcers, phlebitis, lower extremity venous ulcers), radiotherapy (skin repair after radiotherapy), dermatology, medical aesthetics (wound care after plastic surgery), ophthalmology (keratitis, refractive surgery, refractive errors, cataracts, glaucoma), orthopedics (tennis elbow, fasciitis, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis), dentistry (gum recession, periodontal disease, alveolar bone defects), and obstetrics and gynecology (cesarean section wound care). This means Huanli Biology not only targets the medical-grade market but also has potential to enter consumer-grade tracks, with significant growth space.

Industry Pain Points Await Resolution: Domestic Enterprises Break Through PDGF Barriers

For a long time, the PDGF drug industry has been constrained by molecular complexity and high technical barriers, developing relatively slowly. Core limiting factors focus on molecular structural complexity and high technical barriers, making this track face long-term supply-side development bottlenecks. In clinical treatment, current mainstream solutions for diabetic foot, burns and other conditions, such as negative pressure therapy, skin substitutes, and antimicrobial therapy, generally have obvious shortcomings—neither achieving accelerated wound healing effects nor significantly reducing recurrence rates, with unmet clinical needs continuously prominent. However, this industry pain point is welcoming breakthrough opportunities: Huanli Biology's PDGF candidate products, with advanced clinical design and sufficient scientific validation, directly break through major limitations of existing therapies while potentially meeting or exceeding strict regulatory requirements, injecting new momentum into industry development.

Meanwhile, the PDGF drug market presents a "limited competition, enormous potential" pattern, with the global market appearing even more "scarce." According to public information, over the past 20 years, the US FDA has approved only one PDGF drug, Regranex (becaplermin), for market sale, priced as high as $1,700/15g, and it has not yet entered the Chinese market, leaving vast market space for domestic enterprises. Against this backdrop, Huanli Biology achieved key breakthroughs through independent R&D systems: not only optimizing PDGF gene sequences but also revolutionizing production processes, ultimately making product PDGF activity 75 times higher than becaplermin, building dual core competitiveness in safety and efficacy. This core technological breakthrough not only fills domestic market gaps but also has potential to reconstruct global PDGF drug competition patterns with industrialization advantages, further establishing explosive growth prospects.

Clinical Efficacy Breakthrough, Healthcare Cost Reduction: PDGF Technology's "Social Benefit Premium"

In recent years, China's population aging process has accelerated and chronic disease prevalence continues rising, putting unprecedented pressure on the medical security system, with medical insurance fund expenditure burden increasing annually. Achieving healthcare cost reduction while ensuring public health has become an important topic for sustainable development of the medical industry. The surge in various wound healing demands, especially chronic difficult-to-heal wound treatment, is becoming a key factor exacerbating medical insurance pressure. From accidental injury acute wounds and post-surgical care to diabetic foot and pressure sores and other chronic wounds, these cover wide populations, have long treatment cycles and high costs, bringing double burden to patient families and medical insurance funds. Additionally, elderly populations have weak wound healing capacity due to skin aging and slowed circulation, while diabetic and cardiovascular disease patients have restricted skin nutrition supply and repair capacity. As high-incidence groups for chronic, difficult-to-heal wounds, their increasing numbers further amplify healing demand pressure. Their treatment requires long-term dressing changes, care, and even multiple surgeries, both consuming large amounts of medical resources and pushing up medical insurance fund expenditure in wound treatment areas. Therefore, technical solutions that can improve healing effects, shorten cycles, and reduce costs are urgently needed. The emergence of PDGF technology provides important solutions for this demand.

According to the prospectus, PDGF is a potent growth factor secreted by platelets after injury, which interacts with specific receptors on cell surfaces, activates signaling pathways, initiates fibroblasts and other key cell types, further promoting wound healing, especially promoting granulation growth and improving scar smoothness.

Clinical trials show PDGF can accelerate tissue repair and regeneration, shorten hospitalization time, and minimize complications, reducing re-treatment needs. Taking Pro-101-1's Phase IIa clinical trial data as an example, superficial/deep second-degree burn subjects in the high-dose group had average healing time shortened by 7 days compared to placebo group. Compared to the 28-day complete healing time for superficial/deep second-degree burn subjects, this represents a 1/4 reduction. This data fully demonstrates the efficacy and safety of Huanli Biology's core products, also reflecting the company's long-term accumulated value in the PDGF field.

From practical application perspective, PDGF technology's value shows bidirectional release: for patient families, shortened healing cycles can reduce repeated long-term care expenses while lowering indirect losses from patients' inability to work, directly alleviating economic pressure; for national medical systems, shortened healing cycles mean reduced hospitalization time and improved bed turnover rates, while reducing healthcare workers' repeated treatment workload, releasing scarce doctor, bed, and consumable resources to more patients, both improving medical resource utilization efficiency and indirectly alleviating medical insurance fund expenditure pressure in wound treatment areas, forming a "patient-family-medical system" win-win-win situation.

More noteworthy is its future expansion space: PDGF technology is not limited to burns and other dermatology departments, but also has potential to penetrate surgery, dentistry and other fields, even leaving hospitals to become home care essentials. If subsequently included in medical insurance guideline catalogs, market coverage will further expand. Huanli Biology's PDGF series products can both precisely enter various wound and post-surgical healing markets and build payment advantages by optimizing production costs and matching medical insurance cost control needs, meaning that while achieving social benefits, it also opens greater imagination space for its own commercialization.

R&D Innovation Orientation Distinct, Chief Strategy Officer is Star Executive in Pharmaceutical Industry

Besides rich R&D pipeline and promising product prospects, Huanli Biology's R&D team members are experienced, with core members averaging over 15 years of industry experience.

Worth mentioning, Mr. Miao Tianxiang, once called "Pfizer China's leader," and Ms. Song Bing, former Goldman Sachs Gao Hua Securities senior executive, have now joined Huanli Biology. As core management team members, Mr. Miao serves as the company's Executive Director and Chief Strategy Officer, responsible for formulating, implementing, and supervising the company's overall strategic planning. As one of the earliest senior executives of foreign pharmaceutical companies in China, Mr. Miao worked at Pfizer China, one of China's largest foreign pharmaceutical companies, for nearly 30 years and served as Chairman of Pfizer Greater China. Mr. Miao has rich experience in finance, corporate management, and the pharmaceutical industry. Ms. Song Bing serves as Chairman of Huanli Biology's Supervisory Board, responsible for providing advice and supervision for the company's overall planning. She long served at top international investment bank Goldman Sachs Gao Hua Securities and served as General Manager and Chief Operating Officer. Ms. Song Bing has extremely strong creativity and leadership in financial investment, corporate strategy, and capital operations. The combination of these two in comprehensive leadership undoubtedly brings valuable industry experience and strategic insights to Huanli Biology, helping the company achieve greater breakthroughs in innovative drug R&D and market expansion.

Conclusion

In 2025, global capital will more actively seek high-return investment opportunities in Hong Kong stocks, and the interest-rate-sensitive Hong Kong innovative drug sector will continue to benefit. Companies like Huanli Biology with strong independent R&D capabilities and commercial prospects will fully unleash their long-term potential.