Dapu Biosciences: A Pioneer in Droplet Microfluidics Technology Files for IPO

At the beginning of the year, ThunderBio Innovation Limited just completed a hundred-million-level B1 round.Financing, the entire Series B round will reach a scale of several hundred million, indicating the capital's favor for the track. The Series B1 round of financing is specifically for multipleDroplet Microfluidic PlatformThe global commercial expansion; tracing back three years, it also received strategic investment from the IVD company Amplab, and within three years, completed Pre-A and A rounds of financing exceeding 100 million yuan. It gradually built a complete R&D, production, and commercial operation system, forming the current momentum for global commercial expansion. Overall,ThunderBio Innovation Limited, as an emerging high-end force in China-produced products, will empower industries including IVD and serve as a provider of high-end instruments.

ThunderBio Innovation Limited is a leader in droplet microfluidics in China, focusing on applying droplet microfluidics technology to the biopharmaceutical and precision medicine fields. It is committed to becoming a complete solution provider integrating the research and production of microfluidic chips, instruments, and reagents. Its commercialized scientific instruments includeMicrofluidic High-Throughput Screening System, StarSea Single-Cell Sequencing Library Construction System, Nebula Digital PCR System, and Single-Vesicle Analysis System, etc., which can be applied in fields such as antibody screening, enzyme evolution, synthetic biology, high-throughput drug screening, cancer research, early cancer screening, targeted therapy, non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, virus quantification, and biopharmaceutical quality inspection. It is not an exaggeration to call it a high-end fundamental scientific instrument.

What we usually hear more about is microfluidics technology, so what is the difference with droplet microfluidics? First, let's revisit the definition of microfluidics technology: it is a technology that uses Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) to control and manipulate fluids at the microscale (usually in the micrometer to millimeter range). It covers multidisciplinary knowledge and technologies such as microelectronics, micromachining, chemistry, biology, and materials science.

Microfluidic technology is often described as bringing the laboratory onto a chip the size of a fingernail, highly concentrated. For the testing industry, it only requires contact with the fluid, and then it will control the testing and analysis reports.Droplet microfluidics is an important branch of microfluidic technology., which focuses on the generation and manipulation of discrete micro-droplets, typically in the volume range of nanoliters to picoliters. Each droplet is independent and can be individually controlled and manipulated, with the advantage of achieving extremely high parallelism,Each droplet can independently perform different experiments, making it suitable for high-throughput experiments.。

It can construct nearly ten million picoliter microdroplet reaction units within minutes and complete the screening of tens of millions of microdroplet reaction units in a single round of experiments. This situation, compared with conventional laboratories,Already a dimensional reduction attack, breaking through the limitations of screening throughput, shortening the cycle, and providing new concepts and options for fields with urgent throughput demands such as antibody development and microbial screening.

ThunderBio Innovation Limited's CSP high-throughput functional cell screening system, developed based on this technology, integrates droplet generation, fluorescence detection, dielectrophoretic sorting, and single-cell printing, enabling the functional screening of millions of single B cells within a day to accelerate antibody development.This is a good choice for IVD raw material enterprises and the raw material sector. Against the backdrop where raw materials are still mainly reliant on imports, the research and development progress of high-end antibodies and core critical raw materials is expected to be accelerated by such powerful tools, completing the task of overcoming challenges more quickly.。

Droplet microfluidics, as a revolutionary technology, is not only applied in pharmaceutical enterprises and the IVD field but also extends to other areas. For example, the microfluidic cartridge in the world's first automatic DEL screening instrument, DELman, launched by WuXi AppTec; in the exosome detection field, ThunderBio Innovation Limited has introduced the ExoStar Single Vesicle Analysis System, which can precisely quantify different subpopulations of exosomes, providing personalized diagnosis and treatment solutions for early screening and diagnosis. As the technology evolves, it may reach even broader fields in the future.In the细分领域of the industry, ThunderBio Innovation Limited belongs to the first tier and is a rising star in the industry.The joining of DAAN, AMPLab, and other IVD companies indicates a certain level of IVD applicability.

According to the 2022 report by international Yole Développement, the total scale of the global microfluidic chip industry was $18.1 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $32.3 billion by 2027. Although the market in China is still in its early stage of development, it is growing rapidly. In 2017, the total microfluidic market size in China was approximately $5.52 billion (equivalent to 3.8 billion RMB), with imported brands accounting for 67%.It is estimated that the domestic market space for microfluidics in China could reach 10.4-11.6 billion RMB (1.48-1.66 billion USD) by 2021.Judging solely from the data, microfluidics is indeed a niche field, and its market share in China will not be very high.

But its downstream market is very extensive, covering almost everything.. It involves multiple industries such as medical diagnostics, petrochemicals, drug screening, sports competition, aerospace, judicial expertise, food safety, environmental testing, veterinary medicine and more. Due to its microfluidic characteristics, currently the most and most mature applications are in the IVD sector. For example, the cooperation with Amplite on digital PCR has achieved improvements in sensitivity, accuracy, high throughput, and portability of PCR. From the broader concept of microfluidics, the application scope and market prospects of droplet microfluidics are not much different. Using it only in the IVD field is obviously insufficient; it will certainly have significant applications.

ThunderBio Innovation Limited, based on its own microfluidic technology, aims to become an overall solution provider integrating precision medicine, life sciences, and biopharmaceutical R&D. This goal has shown initial success through collaborations with companies like Anbiping and Daan Gene, making it achievable.

In the era of high-quality development, having one's own underlying technology and gradually gaining market recognition will become the norm.The three major tools generated based on this — single-cell high-throughput screening systems, single-cell sequencing library construction systems, and digital PCR systems — will shine in the field of life science instruments. If they can make significant contributions, the concept of precision medicine, from detection to companion medication, will be promoted.

References:

1.Strategic Cooperation | ThunderBio Innovation Limited collaborates with BioGeometry to create an integrated software and hardware protein R&D solution, ThunderBio Innovation Limited, 2024

2. ThunderBio Innovation Limited Completes Over 100 Million Yuan in B1 Financing, Accelerating Global Commercial Expansion, Arterial Network, 2024