Recently, several companies in China focusing on the cell and gene therapy (CGT) field have announced financing progress. This article will share basic information on eight of these companies based on publicly available data.
1、Saiqiao Ark (Shenzhen) Biotechnology Co., Ltd. Completes Nearly 200 Million Yuan in Series B Financing
On June 14, Saiqiao Ark (Shenzhen) Biotechnology Co., Ltd. officially announced the completion of its Series B financing. This round of financing amounted to nearly 200 million RMB, led by 3E Bioventures Capital, with participation from H&Z Capital, and continued support from existing shareholders such as Shuimu Ventures, Tengye Venture Capital, Chang Development, and Shenzhen Angel Mother Fund. The funds will accelerate the commercialization process of new quality production equipment.
Since its establishment in March 2020, Saiqiao Ark (Shenzhen) Biotechnology Co., Ltd. has completed the full commercial closed-loop of high-end synthetic biology equipment from technological invention to large-scale application within just four years. It has become the only company in China and one of the top three globally with full independent intellectual property rights and supply chains for cell and gene therapy (CGT) new productive forces. The company is committed to mastering the initiative and pricing power in industry development through upstream key manufacturing technology innovations and the localization of complete sets of core equipment in CGT. This enables "one-click preparation + one-click release" of cell and gene drugs, driving the cost of cell and gene therapies for cancer and chronic diseases from millions of yuan into the ten-thousand-yuan era, benefiting a wider range of patients. Saiqiao Ark has established strategic partnerships with multiple leading customers in the industry and completed the layout across various downstream therapies in the CGT field, including CAR-T, NK, TILs, TCR-T, and gene therapy.
2、Catug Biotechnology Completes Nearly 100 Million Yuan in New Round of Financing
On June 12, Catug Biotechnology announced the completion of a new round of financing worth nearly 100 million yuan. This round of financing was led by EF Capital and Zhiyi Investment, with follow-up investments from Yuanhe Holdings and Suzhou Industrial Park Science and Innovation Fund. The funds will be used to expand Catug Biotechnology's overseas operations and upgrade its full-process CRDMO service capabilities. With innovative application capabilities in DNA and RNA technologies, Catug Biotechnology will continue to empower customers and the industry in cutting-edge fields such as infectious disease vaccines, universal/personalized cancer vaccines, gene therapy, gene editing, in vivo and in vitro cell therapy, and animal vaccines, accelerating the availability of innovative therapies for a wide range of patients through new productive forces.
Catug is an innovative technology company focusing on the development and application of new biopharmaceutical technologies. Established in 2021, the company has operational bases in China, the United States, and Switzerland, with research and development centers and GMP industrialization bases in Suzhou and Wuhan. The core team of Catug comes from top international and domestic biotechnology companies as well as well-known universities and research institutions at home and abroad, possessing extensive industry technology and management experience in the fields of gene therapy and nucleic acid therapy. Starting with four core technical service platforms—high-quality large-scale plasmid process development and production, mRNA synthesis and full-process delivery process development and production, nucleic acid analysis methods, and quality research—the company aims to build a top-tier process technology platform and become a paragon in the new generation of innovative biotechnology industries.
3、Innostellar Biotherapeutics Completes B+ Round of Financing
On June 11, Innostellar Biotherapeutics, an innovative gene therapy pharmaceutical company, announced the completion of its B+ round of financing. This round was led by the Shanghai Biomedical Industry Fund, with follow-on investments from shareholders such as United Investment.
Innostellar Biotherapeutics was founded in 2020 and is committed to the research, development, and manufacturing of innovative gene therapy drugs. Since its establishment, the company has built a GMP-compliant, scalable platform process for producing AAV products. This round of financing will further accelerate Innostellar Biotherapeutics' R&D and industrialization progress in the field of innovative gene therapy drugs.Currently, the company has advanced 5 candidate molecules into clinical trials, taking the lead in conducting gene therapy clinical research in 3 indications of blinding eye diseases, and obtained 3 INDs.The first pipeline, LX101, for the treatment of RPE65 mutation-associated inherited retinal dystrophy (IRD), has entered Phase III clinical trials.The second pipeline, LX102, for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration, has entered Phase II clinical trials;Article 3: LX103, developed by Innostellar Biotherapeutics for the treatment of X-linked retinoschisis, has completed an IIT trial involving 6 patients, demonstrating significant safety and efficacy.4、Cagen Bio Completes New Round of FinancingResources
Recently, ChainGen Bio (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. ("ChainGen Bio") successfully completed a new round of financing, exclusively invested by Phase I of the Zhangjiang Life Health Industry Incubation Angel Fund ("Zhangke He Miao Fund"). The investor of this round, Zhangke He Miao Fund, is an angel fund established within the Zhangjiang Group system by Zhangjiang Sci-Tech Investment to promote the life health industry. It focuses on early-stage investments in innovative drugs, cell and gene therapy, synthetic biology, medical devices, and other advantageous fields.
Curia Therapeutics focuses on drug conjugation and delivery technologies, pioneering the development of antibody-small nucleic acid conjugates in China. This innovation fills the gap in non-hepatic delivery for nucleic acid drugs, bringing hope to patients with neuromuscular diseases who have long faced a lack of effective treatments. Additionally, Curia Therapeutics' Brainferry platform, which facilitates brain penetration using peptides, has the potential to assist macromolecular drugs—including small nucleic acids—in crossing the blood-brain barrier. This advancement could revolutionize the treatment of a broader range of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.5、Lemang Bio Completes 50 Million Yuan in New FinancingRecently, Shenzhen Leman Biotech Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Leman Bio") 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 existing shareholders such as Tiantu Investment and XtalPi continued their support. In addition, Leman Bio and its metabolically enhanced CAR-T project have successively received approximately 20 million yuan in various grants. Thus far, Leman Bio has cumulatively obtained about 150 million yuan in angel financing and project funding. 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 metabolically enhanced cell therapy drugs for solid tumors.
Lemang Bio 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 commenced operations in February 2022. Lemang Bio’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, Lemang Bio 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 R&D pipelines: metabolically reprogrammed biologic macromolecule drugs, anti-exhaustion cell therapy drugs, and super-factor drugs. The company is currently developing rapidly, with 70% of its senior R&D personnel coming from top universities both within and outside China and possessing extensive industrialization experience, and multiple R&D pipelines progressing smoothly. Among them, the metabolically enhanced CAR-T cell therapy is undergoing investigator-initiated trial (IIT) clinical research (NCT05715606, NCT05747157, NCT06120166), with over 20 patients achieving complete remission and being discharged.6、MicroEvolution Medical Completes Tens of Millions of RMB in Angel Round Financing
Recently, Galileo Capital announced the completion of an angel round investment in MicroEvolution (Beijing) Medical Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as: MicroEvolution Medical).MicroEvolution Med, a cross-species tumor gene therapy service provider established on November 20, 2023, focuses on plant RDR1 protein-mediated miRNA repair therapy as its core technology to provide new solutions for clinical needs involving recurrent, refractory, and untreatable cases. This therapy has extremely high market potential and value, with the prospect of becoming the first broad-spectrum anti-tumor platform applicable to multiple cancer indications. MicroEvolution Med’s pioneering technology, plant RDR1 protein-mediated miRNA repair therapy, utilizes a plant gene expression system to mediate miRNA repair in human tumor cells, thereby suppressing tumor growth. This technology not only offers new solutions for clinical needs but also demonstrates wide applicability and promising market prospects.7、Kangyuan Medical Completes Tens of Millions of Yuan in Financing
Recently, Kangyuan Medical Technology (Dalian) Co., Ltd. announced the completion of a multi-million yuan financing round, led by Daotong Investment. The funds will mainly be used for new product development, core technology enhancement, and advancement of product clinical trials.
Kangyuan Medical Technology (Dalian) Co., Ltd. was established in November 2016. The company is a domestic innovative platform for the industrialization of selective materials with complete independent intellectual property rights, which is rare in China. The company's core technology has been successfully implemented in multiple key scenarios. In the pharmaceutical field, to address the high cost of imported core affinity chromatography consumables, the company took the lead in developing an affinity chromatography medium for gene therapy vectors. This product achieves comparable yield and purity to imported products across various serotypes of gene therapy vectors, potentially helping gene therapy companies reduce production costs and improve the accessibility of gene therapy technology. In the medical field, the company pioneered the application of nanobody technology in selective adsorption materials on an international scale. It focuses on the research and production of highly precise selective (targeted) blood purification adsorption column products (Class III medical devices) for treating critical conditions such as renal failure, liver failure, autoimmune diseases, and the removal of cancer cells from the blood. Recently, the company has reached a strategic cooperation agreement with a gene therapy company in Beijing regarding the promotion and application of AAV broad-spectrum affinity chromatography media and columns, specific nanobody screening, and quantitative preparation. Together, they will promote the localization and scaling-up of key purification consumables in the downstream process of gene therapy, improving the harvest efficiency of downstream purification processes for gene therapy drugs, thereby further enhancing the production capacity of gene therapy products made in China and strengthening the coordination and improvement of upstream and downstream industrial chains. In addition, both parties will also engage in technical cooperation in areas such as the screening, development, preparation, and material synthesis services of AAV series products, comprehensively accelerating the localization process of key consumables for gene therapy drugs and advancing the industrial implementation of gene therapies.8、Lingshi Zhiyuan Completes Angel Round Financing
Recently, Shanghai LingShi ZhiYuan Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "LingShi ZhiYuan") announced the completion of its angel round of financing. This round of financing will be mainly used for the optimization of its core technology platform and key pipeline molecules, as well as the IIT clinical trial work for the TCR drug pipeline. The company is currently actively promoting its next round of Series A financing and has already gained favor and term sheets (TS) from several well-known biopharmaceutical investment institutions. It is expected to complete the Series A financing as soon as possible to accelerate the IND application process for its core pipelines and advance clinical trials.
LingShi Quality Source Team Has 7 Years of Experience in TCR Discovery and TCR Drug Development, Independently Developing Two Key Technology Platforms: The "TCR Miner™ Discovery Platform" and "Soluble TCR Engineering Transformation Technology." It is a Platform Company with TCR Discovery and TCR Drug Development Capabilities. TCR drugs, by targeting 80% of intracellular targets in the human genome, have the potential to provide new therapeutic options and hope for 80% of cancer patients who do not respond to immune checkpoint inhibitor treatments. The company is currently focused on the discovery and development of monoclonal TCR drugs in the field of solid tumors, with plans to expand into autoimmune diseases in the future.
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Disclaimer: The graphic content is sourced from the official WeChat accounts of the Cell and Gene Therapy Field, Cell Gene Therapy, and various company websites. This article aims to share knowledge, and all content is for reference only and does not constitute any recommendations.
