Connect Biopharma Holdings Ltd CNTB

Connect Biopharma, headquartered in San Diego, California, is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to transforming care for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ("COPD"). The Company is advancing rademikibart, a next-generation, potentially best-in-class antibody designed to target interleukin-4-receptor alpha ("IL-4Rα").

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the airways in the lungs and makes it difficult to breathe. It is one of the most common and costly diseases in the U.S., with an estimated 23 million adults and an estimated 5 million children suffering from asthma. Globally, asthma affected an estimated 262 million people in 2019 and caused 455,000 deaths. Asthma is associated with severe exacerbations that are difficult to treat and often require hospitalization. Approximately one million asthma patients visit emergency departments annually, of which approximately 11% are hospitalized with an average length-of-stay of two to three days. Approximately 50% of asthma patients who visit emergency departments meet treatment failure criteria within four weeks of an exacerbation. Approximately 20% of such patients require a re-visit to the emergency department and an additional approximately 30% require medical care from another source, such as urgent care or medical clinics. Current standard of care treatment for these patients includes fast-acting inhaled bronchodilators and oral or intravenous ("IV") corticosteroids. Severe cases may require IV magnesium sulfate, heliox therapy, and noninvasive ventilation. Intubation is considered if patients do not respond to these initial therapies. Approximately 50% of patients fail to improve on first-line treatments. As a result, we believe there exists a significant unmet need for more effective therapy for the treatment of acute asthma. Further, we believe that, if rademikibart were approved for the treatment of acute asthma, a significant percentage of asthma patients treated acutely with rademikibart would remain on it chronically. We also believe that rademikibart, if approved, would offer the opportunity for significant healthcare cost savings by potentially reducing the length of stay for admitted asthma patients, as well as potentially reducing the frequency of emergency department re-visits and rehospitalizations.