After Lilly and AbbVie, Haisco Picks Nuvectis Pharma for $1.46B Deal Spanning Two Late-Stage Assets with Best-in-Class Potential
Nuvectis Pharma (NASDAQ: NVCT) just joined Lilly, AbbVie, and Merck as a Haisco in-licensor, acquiring ex-China rights to two late-stage assets for $40M upfront and up to $1.42B in milestones - a PNH drug with 7x superiority over Soliris in Phase 3, and a next-gen BRAF inhibitor for $20B+ markets.
The flow of clinical-stage drug candidates out of Chinese biotech and into the hands of Western pharma has been one of the defining dealmaking patterns of the past two years. Merck, Pfizer, GSK, Eli Lilly, AbbVie, and Bristol Myers Squibb have all paid hundreds of millions - and in some cases billions for ex-China rights to compounds from Chinese research labs. When these deals work, the upside has accrued almost entirely to the Western in-licensor.
Within that wave, one Chinese name keeps recurring: Haisco Pharmaceutical Group (SHE: 002653). In January, Haisco's Phase 2 COPD asset anchored AirNexis Therapeutics, a Frazier-led $200 million Series A NewCo with up to $955 million in milestones. In April, AbbVie paid $30 million upfront plus up to $715 million for two Haisco NaV1.8 pain candidates. In May, Eli Lilly signed a five-program R&D pact worth up to $3 billion. The precedent extends further back: when Alumis Inc. (NASDAQ: ALMS) - which in-licensed an oral TYK2 inhibitor from Haisco-affiliated FronThera in 2021 - reported positive Phase 3 plaque psoriasis data on January 6, 2026, shares surged 95% on the announcement, and market cap has since expanded from roughly $767 million pre-data to over $3 billion as of mid-2026, alongside a follow-on equity offering of approximately $345 million in March 2026.
On Monday, Nuvectis Pharma (NASDAQ: NVCT) joined that list. Under a strategic in-licensing agreement with Haisco, the leading precision-medicine developer acquired exclusive ex-China rights to two clinical-stage compounds - NXP100 and NXP200 - for $40 million in upfront and near-term payments, up to $1.421 billion in milestones, plus tiered royalties. The transaction transforms Nuvectis from a single-asset oncology company into a multi-platform, late-stage developer addressing a combined PNH and IgA nephropathy market opportunity that the issuer has projected, citing third-party estimates, to exceed $20 billion within the next decade.
What Nuvectis just acquired in PNH
NXP100, a once-daily oral Complement Factor B inhibitor, gives Nuvectis what may be PNH's most compelling competitive profile today. In a randomized Phase 3 head-to-head in treatment-naïve patients in China, 59.5% of NXP100 patients achieved hemoglobin ≥12 g/dL without transfusion versus 8.3% on Soliris (p<0.001) - a sevenfold response gap on the primary endpoint, with superiority across every key secondary. In a separate Phase 3 in patients who had failed C5 inhibitor therapy, 52.8% met the same threshold. Two MAAs are already under review at China's NMPA, putting Nuvectis on a near-term path to its first approvals. Patent protection runs to 2043.
The differentiation runs in multiple directions. Against AstraZeneca's legacy C5 franchise - Soliris and Ultomiris, the centerpiece of AZ's $39 billion acquisition of Alexion - NXP100 is oral, head-to-head superior in Phase 3, and addresses extravascular hemolysis that C5 inhibition leaves behind. Against Novartis's twice-daily oral Fabhalta - with quarterly sales of $155 million in Q4 2025 (up from $81 million in Q1 2025), with $5–10 billion peak-sales projections - NXP100 is once-daily with at least comparable efficacy and longer patent runway. And the same molecule addresses PNH, IgA nephropathy, and lupus nephritis.
What Nuvectis just acquired in BRAF
NXP200, an oral brain-penetrant paradox-breaker BRAF inhibitor in Phase 1b in China, gives Nuvectis a separate but equally large opportunity. The first-generation BRAF class - Tafinlar, Braftovi, Zelboraf, Ojemda - generates roughly $4 billion annually but can't address Class II or Class III mutations and triggers paradoxical MAPK activation in V600 disease. NXP200 is designed to fix both.
The clinical data Nuvectis is inheriting is eye-catching: in a completed dose-escalation in heavily pretreated patients - including those previously failing BRAF/MEK combinations - single-agent NXP200 delivered a >40% response rate in low- and high-grade adult glioma including one complete response, plus durable responses in colorectal, melanoma, NSCLC, and papillary thyroid cancers. A second-generation salt form has shown improved pharmacokinetics; patent protection runs to 2042. In April, Servier acquired Day One Biopharmaceuticals for $2.5 billion for Ojemda, whose 2026 projected sales of $225–250M represent only about 6% of the $4 billion BRAF market. NXP200's potential population sits orders of magnitude larger.
The team to execute
Nuvectis is led by its three co-founders: CEO Ron Bentsur, previously CEO of UroGen Pharma (NASDAQ: URGN) and Keryx Biopharmaceuticals; Chief Scientific and Business Officer Dr. Enrique Poradosu, previously head of business and scientific strategy at Stemline Therapeutics and a Keryx executive before that; and Chief Development and Operations Officer Shay Shemesh, who led the work that produced FDA approval of Elzonris at Stemline (acquired by Menarini in 2020) after leading Auryxia clinical operations at Keryx. The three hold a substantial combined equity stake. NXP900, Nuvectis's oral SRC/YES1 kinase inhibitor, remains central, approaching Phase 1b inflection points this summer in a combination with AstraZeneca's Tagrisso at Massachusetts General Hospital, led by Dr. Zofia Piotrowska of the FLAURA program.
With NXP100's MAAs under review, NXP900 inflection points this summer, and NXP200 readouts through 2026, the catalyst slate is exceptionally rich, and existing cash, prior to the new licensing commitments, funded operations into 2H 2027. Haisco's platform has produced licensing or acquisition transactions involving Alumis, Frazier-backed AirNexis, AbbVie, and Lilly in the past five years, and Nuvectis has now joined that group of in-licensors.
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