AstraZeneca signs $18.5 billion weight-loss-drug deal with Chinese firm

The UK pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is doubling down on its commitment to the Chinese drugmaker CSPC Pharmaceutical Group with a new deal worth up to $18.5 billion.AstraZeneca has agreed to pay CSPC $1.2 billion up front and up to $3.5 billion in development and regulatory milestone payments across eight drug development programs for weight loss and Type 2 diabetes, the British firm says in a Jan. 30 press release. According to a separate release from CSPC (PDF), additional sales milestone payments could ring up at $13.8 billion, bringing the total that AstraZeneca could pay out to $18.5 billion.That makes the transaction one of the largest yet for a weight-loss-drug collaboration—and among the largest involving a Chinese firm. It outpaces GSK’s $12.5 billion agreement with Shanghai's Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals in July, which was previously the largest licensing deal with a Chinese drugmaker, according to data from consultancy group Evaluate.Big US and European pharmaceutical firms are increasingly looking to license Chinese assets and develop them for markets outside of Asia. That includes weight-loss programs, which consistently rank among the hottest areas for investment. One of last year’s largest start-up launches belonged to Kailera Therapeutics, a US firm backed by $400 million in venture funds that’s based on four drug candidates licensed from Hengrui for weight loss and metabolic conditions.The AstraZeneca-CSPC deal will initially focus on four molecules. The first, a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist, is slated to enter human trials shortly, while three others are in the preclinical stage. The