Finding Drugs in China

The Scientist profiles Mireille Gingras' company, HUYA Bioscience International, which focuses on finding early-stage drug compounds from China. HUYA, the article says, has a codevelopment model in which it licenses the compounds for development for Western markets and the Chinese company retains the rights to the Chinese market. HUYA plans to file an IND with the FDA later this year, after having worked with FDA on how to report the Chinese data; then it plans to sell the compound to a larger pharma company. "Our model is up to and through to Phase II; we don't go further on," Gingras says.