DeliNova Therapeutics secures 60M yuan in seed and angel funding to advance in vivo CAR-T programs

Recently, DeliNova Therapeutics, a pioneering Chinese biotech company focused on innovative in vivo CAR-T therapies, announced the completion of its seed and angel funding rounds.

The investment consortium included Lotus Capital (affiliated with SJTU Foundation), Legend Capital, Casstar, Shengjing Investment, and Hongfeng Venture, among others. The raised capital will be used to accelerate the evolution of its core technology platform, team development, and the clinical translation and advancement of its lead candidate product in areas such as hematologic malignancies and autoimmune diseases.

DeliNova Therapeutics is centered around its core platforms for "multi-dimensional" engineered viral vector modification and T-cell-specific delivery. By precisely engineering lentiviral vectors, the company enables the direct, efficient, and specific in vivo transduction of T cells to generate CAR-T cells.

The company's lead product is based on clinically validated targets, with an investigator-initiated trial (IIT) for hematologic malignancies expected to commence shortly, while simultaneously preparing for the IND stage. IITs for autoimmune diseases and solid tumors are planned to launch in 2026. In the future, DeliNova aims to expand its multi-target immune cell platform technologies and explore their potential applications in chronic conditions such as anti-aging.

The in vivo CAR-T technology underpinning DeliNova was developed over many years in the laboratory of Professor Yujia Cai at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Professor Cai's lab was among the earliest globally to focus on lentiviral vector-based "in-body manufacturing" of CAR-T and other gene therapies. As early as 2017, Professor Cai initiated projects in in vivo CAR-T research, and his work received the Silver Award from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University - The University of Hong Kong Translational Medicine Alliance in December 2017, highlighting its technical foresight and academic influence in the field. Leveraging long-accumulated technological strengths, Professor Cai's lab has established significant barriers in viral vector optimization, T-cell-specific targeting, and in vivo gene delivery, providing a solid foundation for DeliNova's technology platform.