Evidently, the road from R&D to trials to commercialisation took quite a while longer. Numerous other investors helped chip in along the way, but the intellectual property was eventually sold to CTI in 2012 and approval for sale was only given last year. Besides receiving an upfront payment, S*Bio would continue to receive certain future royalties on worldwide sales of Vonjo.
Three months ago, Nasdaq-listed CTI Biopharma was bought by Sobi of Sweden in an all-cash deal for US$1.7 billion ($2.3 billion). Obviously an unfamiliar name to most investors here, Seattle-based CTI has just one product approved for sale: Vonjo, which treats an uncommon form of bonemarrow cancer.
The deal has not gone unnoticed by Dr Foo Fatt Kah of Luminor Capital, who for years has been an active player in the local bioscience sector. In his June 19 opinion piece, “This medical breakthrough has its origins in Singapore”, published by The Edge Singapore, Foo describes how some of the early research output that ended up in Vonjo was from S*Bio, Singapore’s firstever bioscience company, a joint venture formed in 2000 between the Economic Development Board (EDB) and US pharmaceutical company Chiron Corp.
