Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical 2025 Keywords: Insulin Export, Innovative Drug Relay, AI Empowerment

Asking AI · How can insulin going global help promote Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical’s internationalization strategy?

On March 31, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical (06887.HK) released its 2025 performance report. In the past year, the company achieved operating revenue of 4.815 billion yuan, up 19.81% year-on-year; net profit attributable to the parent company was 272 million yuan, successfully turning a loss into a profit.

This growth was mainly attributable to higher penetration of core products and ongoing optimization of the product structure.

On the one hand, the company has strengthened its base in the anti-infection field. The Covew core series performs strongly during the peak flu season; in 2025, it contributed revenue of 3.576 billion yuan, up 38.56% year-on-year. On the other hand, in the chronic disease segment, insulin products contributed revenue of 244 million yuan in 2025, achieving rapid growth of 78.65%. At the same time, the company has already had 4 Class 1 innovative drugs approved and listed in succession, opening up a broader space for imagination for its innovative drug pipeline.

In the view of industry insiders, this set of steady growth results not only demonstrates Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical’s deep capabilities in core areas such as anti-infection, chronic diseases, and oncology, but also clearly signals to the outside world: as the innovative drug pipeline is laid out in a gradient, and the AI R&D platform is continuously improved, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical is transforming from a traditional pharmaceutical company into an innovation-driven pharmaceutical enterprise. Its growth logic and long-term value are drawing close attention from the market.

New Forces in Insulin Going Global

In the anti-infection field, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical continues to maintain a leading position in the market.

In 2025, the sales revenue of the Covew core series was 3.576 billion yuan, up 38.56% year-on-year, becoming the ballast for the company’s steady performance growth. The growth momentum mainly came from the seasonal spike in flu in the second half of 2025 and the company’s ongoing optimization of multi-channel layout. Meanwhile, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical added multiple products such as pediatric amoxicillin chlorpheniramine granules, pediatric faropenem granules, and children’s antipyretic patches, fully meeting pediatric medication needs, expanding the pediatric drug market, and injecting new growth momentum into the anti-infection drug segment.

In the chronic disease field, insulin series products are regarded as the area most likely to rapidly grow into pillar-type products after Covew.

It is worth noting that Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical has been proactively laying out insulin R&D since 2005 and entered a dense harvest period between 2020 and 2023.

Currently, the company has 5 self-developed insulin products, all of which have been approved for market launch and have been selected in the centralized national drug procurement. In 2025, insulin products recorded sales revenue of 244 million yuan, a significant year-on-year increase of 78.65%.

Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical’s head of sales said that, thanks to a comprehensive layout of second-generation and third-generation products, under the national centralized procurement policy, the insulin product line has achieved value return after “price-for-volume,” resulting in a substantial jump in operating revenue.

At the same time, the Degludec insulin injection and Degludec/Insulin Aspart insulin injection under research at the company have entered the registration review stage. Once approved in the future, they are expected to achieve rapid market scale-up with the help of centralized procurement channels.

More importantly, the insulin business is becoming a breakthrough point for Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical’s internationalization strategy.

The company disclosed in its financial report that its glargine insulin production base located in Yichang, Hubei, was subject to on-site inspection by the U.S. FDA between September and October 2025. Based on the current review progress and an assessment of the FDA’s regular review cycle, the company is optimistic that its glargine insulin injection will receive approval for a Biologics License Application (BLA) in the first half of 2026.

If successful, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical is expected to become the first local pharmaceutical company in China to enter the U.S. insulin market, emerging as a new force in insulin going abroad.

Innovative Drugs in Succession

If the company’s fundamentals have remained solid and insulin has continued to expand its moat, then the innovative drug pipeline provides Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical with a far broader imagination space.

In terms of pipeline layout, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical’s 4 Class 1 innovative drugs have been approved and listed in succession: the first self-developed innovative drug Dongwei En (Emevelitavir capsules) approved in 2020; Dongwei Zhuo (Nantongavir capsules) approved in 2025; Dongying He (Eicosaprovir tablets); and SGLT2 inhibitor Dongze An (Ologrel净gluc capsules) approved for listing in early 2026.

It is worth noting that the combination of Dongwei Zhuo and Dongying He has become the only domestically produced oral pan-genotypic hepatitis C treatment regimen with independent intellectual property rights. With the approval and listing of three hepatitis C new drugs—Dongwei En, Dongwei Zhuo, and Dongying He—Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical has built a domestic hepatitis C product matrix with the widest coverage in China, further strengthening the competitive barriers in the hepatitis C field.

In early 2026, the Class 1 innovative drug Dongze An, used to improve blood glucose control in adult patients with type 2 diabetes, was approved for listing, further enriching the company’s diabetes product series layout.

In the oncology field, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical’s pipeline is advancing steadily and in an orderly manner, and the commercialization turning point is getting closer.

Cliforatinib for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the first domestic FLT3 inhibitor to enter Phase III clinical trials. HEC53856 tablets, used to treat anemia caused by chemotherapy in patients with non-myeloid malignant tumors, have completed Phase II clinical trials. HEC-921 injection focuses on colorectal cancer; it is the world’s first LY6G6D/4-1BB bispecific antibody, avoiding the common liver-toxicity issues associated with the 4-1BB target.

Overall, as of now, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical’s innovative pipeline under research includes 50 Class 1 innovative drugs, among which more than 10 are already in Phase II and Phase III stages. Many pipelines have “First-in-class” or “Best-in-class” potential.

For the commercialization of innovative drugs, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical accelerates market penetration through BD collaboration and licensing (such as licensing Cliforatinib to Sanwei Pharmaceutical), and by strengthening academic promotion and market coverage through newly established specialty drug line teams, exploring diversified commercialization pathways.

AI Boosts and Enhances Competitiveness

Based on forward-looking insights into the trend of AI reshaping biopharmaceutical R&D efficiency, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical has, since 2023, been actively working with partners to build and implement plans, seeking to empower drug R&D at all stages with AI technology.

Currently, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical has built an intelligent drug discovery platform for HEC drugs with independent intellectual property rights. The platform aims to create an end-to-end R&D engine that connects “target/molecule—pharmacokinetics—formulation—synthesis—clinical,” comprehensively covering key steps such as molecule generation, drug-likeness prediction, retrosynthesis planning, and prescription process development.

With the help of this intelligent drug discovery platform, the screening time for preclinical candidate compounds (PCC) has been reduced from 2–3 years to 1.5 years, improving efficiency by more than 60%. In addition, the first in-development small-molecule new drug HEC169584 developed based on this platform’s AIDD (AI-enabled drug discovery and design) has successfully obtained permission to conduct clinical trials. Its preclinical data demonstrates potential that is better than that of already approved reference drugs (Resmetirom).

Meanwhile, since 2025, Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical has actively reached in-depth cooperation with top domestic AI and software technology companies to accelerate the building of a “Drug + AI” ecosystem, including partnering with Sanwei Tiandi to build an AI pharmacology digital laboratory; jointly building a three-in-one industrial-grade AI pharmaceutical solution covering “data—models—applications” with Dongguan Advanced Industrial Software Innovation Co., Ltd.; co-building the HEC intelligent drug discovery platform with Weixin Computing to promote digitalization across the entire R&D process; and signing with Jintai Technology to plan to establish a joint venture to jointly build an AI-driven drug R&D platform covering joint laboratories, large-model development, and a MaaS commercial model.

Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical’s head of technology said that in the future, Dongyang Sunshine will upgrade the HEC intelligent drug discovery platform into the core engine driving new drug discovery and development. “We are turning drug R&D, which used to be full of uncertainty, into something more deterministic—so that good drugs can come sooner, giving patients waiting for new medicines a lifeline.”

With insulin going abroad taking a key step, and multiple innovative drugs entering the stage of commercialization and volume ramp-up, and with AI pharmaceutical achievements continuing to be implemented, in 2026 Dongyang Sunshine Pharmaceutical is clearly outlining a three-dimensional strategic transformation path, moving toward its goal of becoming an innovation-driven pharmaceutical enterprise.

This article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice