Beijing’s failure to import mRNA Covid jabs ‘mind-boggling’, says BeiGene

One of China’s most prominent biotech companies said it was “mind-boggling” that Beijing has not allowed sales of Covid-19 vaccines using technology pioneered by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer.

BeiGene’s research chief told the Financial Times it was “unfortunate” that Chinese authorities had not approved messenger RNA shots, which provide longer lasting and higher levels of protection than vaccines made by homegrown rivals.

China is the only big economy that has maintained strict quarantine for international arrivals and lockdowns to curb outbreaks of the virus. The pandemic policies have stunted the country’s economic growth and disrupted global supply chains.

Experts said that China’s low elderly vaccination rate and reliance on domestic jabs have prompted Beijing to stick to its controversial zero-Covid policy.

“It’s mind-boggling. I don’t fully understand why they are doing that,” said Wang Lai, BeiGene’s global head of R&D, in an interview in New York.

Wang said he thought Chinese authorities wanted to “somewhat protect some of the China vaccines . . . which is unfortunate”.

Several Chinese pharmaceutical companies are developing mRNA alternatives to the Moderna and BioNTech vaccines, but they have struggled to adapt to new variants.

Beijing has not approved any mRNA vaccines, and the mass production of this type of technology is more complex than China’s existing inactivated shots made by Sinopharm and Sinovac, which produce a weaker immune response.

BeiGene, which was founded in Beijing in 2010, is rapidly expanding its international operations and is listed on the Hong Kong, Shanghai and Nasdaq exchanges.

The company has begun developing its own mRNA technology but Wang said it had no ambition to work on Covid vaccines because the field was already crowded. Instead, it plans to use mRNA technology to make cancer vaccines.

It has signed partnerships in the field with US-based Strand Therapeutics and InnoRNA, a Shenzhen-based start-up, he said.

BeiGen’s US-listed shares have fallen 63 per cent over the past 12 months, part of a sector-wide plunge after biotech stocks soared at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

It reported a net loss of $571.4mn for the quarter ending June 30, compared with $480.3mn in the same quarter last year. Revenue in the second quarter was $341.6mn, up from $150mn a year earlier.

Wang said Covid lockdowns in Shanghai and Beijing this year had an impact on the company’s research functions in those cities but the reaction of BeiGene employees helped minimise the disruption.

He said some scientists had formed strong “bonds”, living and working in the company’s labs during lockdowns. “Believe it or not, they actually liked it . . . We had places for them to stay, we had tents and we had food.”

China’s zero-Covid policy has delayed US approval of one of BeiGene’s best growth prospects, the cancer drug tislelizumab. In July, the company said the US Food and Drug Administration had been unable to conduct inspections of facilities in China and was deferring action on its application.

“The FDA doesn’t want to send people over there [China] and then they end up in a hotel for three weeks,” said Andrew Berens, analyst at SVB Securities.

BeiGene was one of about 200 Chinese companies trading in New York that faced possible delisting for failing to meet US regulators’ demands to inspect their audits. In August, Washington and Beijing reached an audit deal, though whether it will resolve all the issues remains unclear.

Wang, who lived in the US for more than a decade before joining BeiGene, said the company had been responsive to Washington’s audit concerns, including by switching from the China-based Ernst & Young Hua Ming to the US-based EY.

“We have really taken a proactive approach to solving this problem and I don’t think this is an issue anymore,” he said.

Wang said the pharma industry must remain above politics because an economic decoupling between China and the US would be a “disaster”.

“You don’t want just because two countries have issues that you prevent patients’ access to novel medicine — that is just not right.”