Spotlight On... Meinian Onehealth sweetens bid for iKang; TWi gets court win on Megace generic; India establishing $78M Gujarat NIPER facility; and more...

Meinian Onehealth Healthcare and a group of investors have sweetened their offer to buy iKang Healthcare Group ($KANG), raising their bid to $23.50 per American Depositary Share (ADS) from the original bid of $22 per ADS. The investors include units of Ping An Insurance, Taiping Asset Management, Huatai Ruilian Fund Management, Sequoia China Investment Management and Cathay Capital Private Equity. The new bid is about 46.2% above iKang's last closing price on Aug. 28 and also comes after iKang announced it had created a poison-pill antitakeover defense. "We are optimistic about the potential of China's preventive health industry," Yu Rong, CEO of Meinian, said in a company release. "We believe that there are huge untapped market opportunities, and that the sector has entered a phase of industry consolidation." Meinian has more than 130 medical exam centers in about 80 cities throughout China and claims to have a customer base of 10 million. It was founded in 2004. In 2014 iKang went public in the U.S. on Nasdaq and raised $153 million while Meinian became listed in Shenzhen via a reverse merger with Jiangsu Sanyou Group. Release

> Taiwan's TWi Pharmaceuticals said a federal appeals court in Maryland has given it the go-ahead to sell its generic version of Par Pharmaceutical's AIDS drug Megace. Release

> The government of India is setting up the first National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research in Gujarat that will focus on developing medical devices; it's spending about $78 million on the new NIPER campus. Report

> Indian drugmakers such as Bal Pharma cheered a recent government decision to impose antidumping duties on Chinese bulk makers of gliclazide used to make diabetic treatments. Report

> South Korea's Bukwang Pharm said it has completed a Phase II "prestudy" on its new MLR-1023 used to treat Type 2 diabetes. Report