On debut today, Biopharmaceutical company TransThera soared 80% in Hong Kong.
The company has yet to bring any products to market, but it has six drug candidates in clinical trials and one in pre-clinical trials, focusing on small-molecule therapies for cancer, inflammatory conditions and cardio-metabolic diseases.
The preliminary prospectus described the company’s core drug, tinengotinib, as a multi-target kinase inhibitor designed to treat a range of tumors that have not responded to other therapies.
The drug is expected to complete a clinical trial in China in the second half of 2025, clearing the way for a marketing application. But by this timetable, commercial revenue will not start to flow before 2026.
Tinengotinib has the potential to treat relapsed or refractory tumors including gastric, prostate and breast cancers. According to the filing, it is the only drug at the clinical trial stage specifically targeting recurrent or drug-resistant bile duct tumors in patients with mutated FGFR receptors, which allow cancer cells to grow and spread. A research report cited in the prospectus found there were about 280,000 patients with cancer of the bile duct last year around the world, of which about 25% had FGFR mutations.
A market of around 70,000 is not very big for a cancer drug, and TransThera will face competition from other treatments.
U.S. drug regulators have cleared three FGFR inhibitors for cancer of the bile duct, while China has approved pemigatinib from Innovent Biologics (1801.HK) in the same category. But TransThera’s prospectus said the FGFR inhibitors currently on the market were unable to overcome a build-up of drug resistance, leaving tinengotinib as a potential option for intractable tumors.
The company was founded in 2014 and two years later its current chairman and CEO, Frank Wu, took a stake. A first phase of clinical trials for tinengotinib began in the United States In 2018 and accelerated from there. The prospectus said Wu had worked for more than 27 years in the biopharma industry, serving as chief scientist at Sihuan Pharmaceutical (0460.HK) from 2014 to 2015 and gaining management experience in the drug sector.