When Michelle Xia returned to China in 2008 after two decades abroad, she didn’t plan on becoming the CEO of one of the country’s most exciting biotech firms. But her decision to co-found Akeso in 2012 with just $3 million in angel funding would ultimately place her company and China’s entire biotech sector on the global map.
At the time, China’s pharmaceutical industry was still dominated by generics. The infrastructure for innovative drug development barely existed, and few companies dared to invest in original discovery work. Talent and capital were scarce, and skepticism was widespread among doctors, investors, and regulators. “Every idea was new, and nothing came easily,” Xia later recalled.
Akeso’s early days were a scrappy operation: a small rented office, a handful of researchers, and periods when Xia and her co-founders went without salary to keep the company afloat. But their gamble paid off. Today, Akeso is valued at more than $15 billion, and its pipeline reflects China’s biotech transformation from follower to global contender.
At the heart of Akeso’s success is ivonescimab, a bispecific antibody therapy that blocks two key cancer pathways, PD-1 and VEGF, to help the immune system attack tumors while cutting off their blood supply. In 2023, ivonescimab outperformed Merck’s Keytruda in a Phase III study of non-small cell lung cancer, a result that made waves across the global biopharma industry. This clinical milestone was followed by a landmark partnership with California-based Summit Therapeutics, which paid $500 million upfront, plus up to $5 billion in potential milestone payments, to co-develop and commercialize the drug.
But Akeso is not just a one-drug story. Its second flagship therapy, cadonilimab, became the world’s first bispecific cancer immunotherapy to win regulatory approval, providing a new treatment option for cervical cancer patients in China. The company is also advancing penpulimab for nasopharyngeal carcinoma and developing next-generation bispecific ADCs (antibody-drug conjugates) with dual cancer-targeting payloads.
This rapid rise mirrors the maturation of China’s broader biotech ecosystem. Since 2015, regulatory reforms have aligned Chinese drug approvals with international standards, allowing innovative therapies to enter the market faster. Venture capital and private equity have flooded into the sector, supporting a new wave of domestic champions. With its vast patient population and robust clinical trial capacity, China has become a strategic hub for developing novel therapies at global scale.
For Xia, the next chapter is clear: take Akeso fully global. The company is actively seeking partnerships, pushing its bispecific pipeline into overseas trials, and expanding beyond oncology into autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases. Akeso is even exploring modalities like mRNA, siRNA, and gene-editing therapies, underscoring its ambition to become a “globally influential pharmaceutical innovator.”
Akeso’s journey from a $3M startup to a $15B powerhouse is emblematic of China’s biotech renaissance. What began as a small, underfunded experiment has evolved into a company with the potential to redefine global cancer treatment, and a signal that China’s biopharma industry has officially entered its innovation era.