SAPA 8th Healthcare Investment Forum and Roadshow Highlights

“Biotech Resilience—Navigating Market Volatility and Policy Shifts”

New York, NY | June 13, 2025 — Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association (SAPA) successfully hosted the 8th Annual Healthcare Investment Forum and Roadshow, at the PwC headquarters in Manhattan, New York. Premier sponsors included PwC, AUCTA Pharmaceutical, Baker McKenzie, and NONA Biosciences. The event attracted nearly 150 participants, including biotech entrepreneurs, executives, dealmakers, business developers, and investors.

Opening Remarks

The forum opened with remarks by Dr. Pan Pan (SVP, Business Development, OncoC4; Forum Co-Chair) and Dr. Xiaodong Chen (Sr. Director, Roivant; SAPA President ’21-’22; Forum Founding Member), who reflected on the forum's eight-year history and reaffirmed SAPA’s mission to drive innovation, investment, and cross-border collaboration across the biopharma ecosystem. Seamus Jiang (Managing Director, PwC) delivered welcoming remarks on behalf of the host organization.

Keynote & Strategic Outlooks

Dr. Daniel Parisotto (Managing Director, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.) highlighted the relative strength of private markets despite persistent macroeconomic and regulatory headwinds. In Q1 2025, private market activity remained concentrated in Series A rounds and NewCo launches, with venture investors showing a growing preference for clinical-stage assets - including those originating from China. M&A activity is on pace to exceed 2024 levels, though it remains below the highs of 2023. Notably, big pharma continues to pursue Chinese asset deals. While upfront payments for Chinese assets - particularly those in the clinic - have increased, they still trail those for comparable U.S. assets. However, in terms of milestone economics, Chinese business development deals have largely reached parity with those involving U.S. or European assets.

Dr. Eric Dimise (Director, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Capital Markets, NYSE), introduced by Dr. Chenchao Gao (Associate Director, Daiichi Sankyo), highlighted NYSE’s record in new issuance coming into mid-year 2025 - six of the top 10 U.S. IPOs in 2025 were listed on the NYSE through the beginning of June, including Hinge Health (NYSE: HNGE), which marked the first digital health IPO in several years. Broadly across the Healthcare sector, 88% of IPOs traded at or above range, hopefully signaling some trending positivity in investor confidence in an otherwise volatile time period for US public markets. 

Later, Xin Tao (JD, Partner at Baker McKenzie) outlined global deal risks and strategies, covering tariffs, supply chain shifts, U.S. drug pricing reforms, DOJ enforcement priorities, and contract risk mitigation for cross-border transactions.

Biotech Roadshows

Dr. Han Zhang (Manager at Biocytogen, Forum Co-Chair) introduced three innovative biotech companies—Avotres (Dr. Alex Li), Crestone (Dr. Nebojsa Janjic), and Convalife (Dr. Qinglin Tang)  to showcase their cutting-edge technologies including modulation of the Treg pathway , anti-tumor bispecific antibodies and novel antibiotic therapies.

Panel Discussions

Marc Estigarribia (MBA, Managing Director at MSQ Ventures) moderated the first panel, "Resilient Capital: Navigating Biotech Fundraising and Strategic Investment amid Market Volatility and Policy Shifts", examined the evolving capital markets with insights from Dr. Eric Dimise (NYSE), Jason Lettiere (Neurvati Neurosciences), Dr. David Iaea (Guggenheim Partners), and Dr. Lin Yu (C Bridge Capital). Speakers discussed IPO trends, NewCo formations, and M&A activities favoring de-risked, later-stage assets, offering strategies for biotech companies to adapt amid continued market headwinds.

The second panel, "Beyond Funding: Making Strategic Deals Through Market Headwinds", led by Dr. Pan Pan, featured Dr. Patrick Moriarty (Merck), Ted Powers, JD (Jones Day), Roel Van den Akker (PwC), and Tim Wang, MBA (Duality Biologics). The discussion focused on deal structures, partnering strategies, and valuation adjustments, with added perspectives on the rising appeal of foreign biotech companies and career advice for professionals navigating life sciences business development.

Closing Remarks

Dr. Xiaodong Chen reflected on the event’s evolution and winning stories of previous roadshow companies. Despite global market headwinds, he emphasized that strong pharma balance sheets, improving public markets, and sustained cross-border deal flow continue to fuel the biotech sector’s momentum. He urged everyone to walk together in collaboration, build a stronger community, advance science and innovation, extend lives, and offer hope.

About SAPA

The Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association (SAPA) was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in New Jersey, USA—America’s pharmaceutical hub. SAPA has grown rapidly and now has seven chapters in the US and China with over 10,000 members, making it one of the most active nationwide Chinese professional associations in the US. SAPA members are primarily from major and mid-sized pharmaceutical and biotech companies, covering every segment of drug R&D and production. Backed by this large network of high-level professionals, SAPA has long facilitated intellectual exchange in traditional pharma, biopharma, and generics. As a registered nonprofit organization, SAPA has enjoyed generous sponsorship from both American and multinational companies. SAPA remains committed to providing a broad platform for scientific discussion, career development, training, business collaboration, and entrepreneurial investment in the pharmaceutical industry.

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