Chinese drug maker Akeso, whose new cancer drug has outperformed a leading Western peer in clinical studies, is being hailed as the “DeepSeek moment” for China’s drug industry, as biotech emerges as a new front in the escalating US-China tech war.
Akeso’s new immunotherapy drug targeting non-small cell lung cancer, called ivonescimab, allowed half of its patients to go 11.1 months without their condition worsening, a metric known as median progression-free survival (PFS), according to phase 3 clinical trial results the company published in The Lancet last week.
The median PFS for pembrolizumab – the world’s most popular cancer drug, sold by US pharmaceutical giant Merck under the brand name Keytruda – was 5.8 months by comparison, the study said.
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Akeso, which first unveiled the findings in September last year at an international industry conference, garnered increased attention in China recently after a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference introduced ivonescimab at the “two sessions” last week.
Media outlets have referred to Akeso’s cancer drug development as the Chinese biotech industry’s “DeepSeek moment”. Last month, Chinese start-up DeepSeek shocked the global tech industry with its high performance artificial intelligence (AI) models developed at a much lower cost than its peers.
The breakthrough was seen as a sign of resilience by China’s tech industry under tight US restrictions on AI chips.
Ivonescimab is a type of immunotherapy known as PD-1 inhibitors, which are antibodies that help the immune system recognise and kill cancer cells.
If the Akeso drug’s efficacy is validated in more upcoming clinical tests, it means that China has gone from lagging behind the US by five years in the PD-1 field to leading by three years, Chinese venture capital fund Frees Fund wrote in a research report published on Wednesday.
