Cambridge Cognition Holdings Plc (LON:COG), which develops and markets digital solutions to assess brain health, has announced an expansion in the Chinese market through a strategic partnership with Luca Healthcare Limited, a category leader in digital screening, treatment and management tools in China. Cambridge Cognition has signed an exclusive licencing agreement with Luca Healthcare to commercialise the Company’s suite of leading cognitive assessment tools in China for both the pharmaceutical and healthcare markets.
The strategic partnership provides Cambridge Cognition with an efficient and low risk geographic expansion whilst leveraging the Company’s recent projects to go live in an Amazon Web Service (“AWS”) data centre in China and implement a range of Chinese languages. Cambridge Cognition will be paid through a mix of milestone payments and royalties. As well as a commercial license, the partnership includes the opportunity to collaborate on co-developments to improve both companies’ solutions.
China is the second most active clinical trial market in the world after the US, having hosted nearly 10,000 industry sponsored trials in the last five years with 14% being in Central Nervous System conditions1. The healthcare market opportunity in China for cognitive impairment diagnostics may also be considerable with nearly 40 million people affected by mild cognitive impairment and nearly 10 million living with Alzheimer’s disease2.
Cambridge Cognition has been laying the groundwork to successfully capitalise on this significant market opportunity since 2019 by establishing a dedicated service in the region delivered from a secure cloud infrastructure provided by AWS in China; developing task variants in the most common spoken (Cantonese and Mandarin) and written (Chinese simplified) languages; and building on an existing relationship with one of the leading Chinese universities, Fudan University, Shanghai.
Echo Chen, Chief Executive Officer of Luca Healthcare, said:
“We are absolutely thrilled to be working with a great team and the most validated cognition assessment tool in the world. Luca’s mission is to make healthcare more affordable and more accessible; this partnership certainly gives us an opportunity to do that for those impacted by neurodegenerative disorders in China.”
Matthew Stork, Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge Cognition, said:
“The Chinese pharmaceutical and healthcare markets offer a significant commercial opportunity for Cambridge Cognition, and we have partnered with Luca Healthcare to capitalise on this. The team at Luca Healthcare have impressed us with their speed to commercialise other digital healthcare solutions, working with leading pharmaceutical companies in the region and, as a result, building a fast growth business.”
References
1. GlobalData. Industry Sponsored Trials in China 17/11/2017 – 17/11/2022.
2. The China Alzheimer’s Report 2022, BMJ General Psychiatry, Vol 35-1
