Recently, Leman Biotech Co., Ltd. (referred to as: Leman), announced the completion of two rounds of new financing, totaling 50 million yuan in angel+ and angel++ rounds.
The new shareholders in this round of financing include Fuhui Venture Capital, Yunfan Technology Investment, and private financial investors, while the existing shareholders Tiantu Investment and Crystal Tech continue to support. In addition, Leman Biotech and its metabolically enhanced CAR-T project have successively received various grants totaling approximately 20 million yuan. Thus far, Leman Biotech has cumulatively obtained about 150 million yuan in angel financing and project grants. This round of financing will primarily be used for the IND application of metabolically enhanced CAR-T cell therapy drugs, accelerating the clinical research of cell therapy drugs targeting solid tumors.
Leman Biotech was co-founded in July 2021 by Professor Li Tang's team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and XtalPi, and officially began operations in February 2022. Leman Biotech’s core technology, Meta 10, has demonstrated significant potential in curing solid tumors, with related findings published in the prestigious academic journals Nature Immunology (2021) and Nature Biotechnology (2024). Building on this, Leman Biotech has established a proprietary technology platform for the discovery, research, and production of biologic macromolecule drugs and novel immunotherapy cell-based drugs. Meanwhile, the company leverages cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology to iteratively upgrade existing drugs, forming three core drug development pipelines: metabolically reprogrammed biologic macromolecule drugs, anti-exhaustion cell therapy drugs, and super-factor drugs.
Leman Biotech's proprietary metabolically enhanced CD19 CAR-T cell therapy is currently undergoing investigator-initiated trial (IIT) clinical research at the First Affiliated Hospital of the University of Science and Technology of China (Anhui Provincial Hospital) and the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine. The project has successfully completed enrollment and treatment of over 20 adult patients with relapsed or refractory leukemia/lymphoma, all achieving complete remission (CR) and being discharged. Additionally, the IIT clinical study of metabolically enhanced CD19 CAR-T was officially launched at the Children’s Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine by the end of March 2024, marking the expansion of this therapy's indications to include pediatric patients with relapsed or refractory CD19-positive B-cell hematologic malignancies.
Notably, the metabolism-enhanced CD19 CAR-T cell therapy not only achieved complete remission (CR) in over 20 patients with advanced relapsed/refractory leukemia/lymphoma in IIT clinical studies, but also required an extremely low drug dose—only 1% of the commercialized CAR-T dose. This breakthrough will significantly shorten the production cycle of the drug, markedly reduce CAR-T manufacturing costs, and is expected to substantially lower the price of what were previously "astronomically expensive" cell therapies, making it possible for this product to be included in China's national medical insurance directory in the future.