Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, July 23rd.

Today on Forbes, how this new biotech billionaire outmaneuvered Merck in China.

Michelle Shia spent a dozen years in research in biotech in the U.S.

Before relocating back to her native China for a job at American Life Sciences contract research

company, Crown Bioscience.

It didn't take long for her to realize that patients in her home country needed to wait a much

longer time than Americans to get the newest and best medicines.

Back then, she says, it took 8 to 10 years for drugs that had been approved in the U.S. to become

available in China.

In drug development then, Chiao recalls, quote, there was not much innovation in China.

China was producing copies of U.S. drugs, but with a big lag time.

Armed with the ambition to change that and ample industry

experience, she launched a biotech company in 2012 with two former Crown Bioscience colleagues

and one other co-founder in the southern city of Jiangshang, west of Hong Kong. She took the lead

as CEO, chairwoman, and president of the startup, which they named

Akezo, after a Greek goddess of healing.

Now, five years after taking Akezo public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the company's

standout lung cancer drug has captured outsized detention in the pharmaceutical world.

In a phase three trial in China last year, comparing Akeso's drug Ivan Escamab to Merck's

Ketruda, the world's best-selling drug with nearly $30 billion in 2024 sales, the Acaso

drug outperformed Ketruda.

The fact that a drug from a little-known Chinese firm beat Merck's bestseller has led to a run-up

...