MaxiNovel Pharmaceuticals Announces ￥200M Series C Financing

According to iyiou.com, MaxiNovel Pharmaceuticals ("MaxiNovel") recently announced it had closed a Series C round of nearly RMB200 million, led by Youchoose Capital. DYEE Capital, Baifu Health and the existing shareholder Longpan Investment also participated in the latest round. This financing will enable MaxiNovel to develop existing and new products, and team expansion.

Before the Series C financing, MaxiNovel had raised three rounds of financing. Founded in 2016, MaxiNovel is a biomedical science and technology company focusing on first-in-class drugs with independent intellectual property rights for targeted therapy and immunotherapy. According to previous media reports, MaxiNovel has four products under development for acute myeloid leukemia, colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, lung cancer, stroke and other diseases, which have no effective treatment with great medical demand.

In the last month, MaxiNovel has made progress on another pipeline. On November 24, MaxiNovel applied for clinical trials of the small molecular PD - L1 inhibitors MAX – 10181. It is conducting the phase I clinical trial for the treatment of advanced solid tumors in Australia. It is reported that this is MaxiNovel's second anti-tumor drug applied for clinical trials in China after Max-40279-01. In 2018, MAX - 40279 has designated as an orphan drug by FDA, and the phaseⅠ clinical trials have been carried out in Australia and China for treatment of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML).

At last year's AACR, MaxiNovel released head-to-head comparative evidence, comparing its oral PD-L1 inhibitor with Astrazeneca's Durvalumab on a humanized tumor model. The data showed that MaxiNovel's oral PD-L1 inhibitor has the same antitumor activity of MC38 tumor as Durvalumab. Meanwhile, it showed a higher ratio of CD8+/Treg than Durvalumab (P <0.01).

Durvalumab is the first PD-L1 inhibitor to be applied for marketing in China. So far, there are only two PD-L1 inhibitors on the market in China, Durvalumab of Astrazeneca and Tecentriq of Roche.

Youchoose Capital was founded in 2014 and is a private equity fund manager registered in the Asset Management Association of China. It focuses on the investment in the early and middle stages in the military and biomedical industries.

DYEE Capital is a private equity & venture capital firm. Founded in June 2016, DYEE Capital focuses on modern services and investing in medical care, information services, consumption upgrading, and other fields.