Phil Rivers Tech Secures Nearly RMB 100 Million Series A Funding to Advance Its Computational Medicine Platform and Proprietary Drug Pipeline

Recently, PHIL RIVERS TECHNOLOGY Co., Ltd. (English name: Phil Rivers Tech, hereinafter referred to as "PHIL RIVERS") announced the completion of a nearly 100-million-yuan Series A round of financing. This round of financing was led by Boxin Capital and Taiya Capital, with follow-up investments from Hailingen Pharmaceuticals and others. The funds will be used for the upgrade of the "Computational Medicine" platform and the advancement of self-developed pipelines.

PHIL RIVERS is a platform company incubated by the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which empowers drug research and development through computational medicine technology. Unlike thousands of new pharmaceutical forces worldwide driven by "AI + molecules," PHIL RIVERS focuses on "AI + disease"-driven drug research and development to address the unclear pathogenesis, which is the core challenge in drug innovation.

From the perspective of the global drug development dilemma, cell and animal models, which were once considered ideal biological models, can no longer simulate real disease patterns. This has led to issues such as target exhaustion, high clinical trial failure rates, severe industry competition, and unmet clinical needs in new drug development.

PHIL RIVERS possesses an exclusive data + knowledge dual-driven artificial intelligence algorithm. The data-driven AI algorithm, DAGG, can transform omics data of real-world tumor patients into activity maps of hundreds of cellular functions and signaling pathways. The knowledge-driven AI algorithm, TWIRLS, can convert over 40 million published biomedical literature articles into perceptive neurons with "knowledge transfer" capabilities. Through the dual-driving force of data and knowledge, PHIL RIVERS has successfully achieved digital modeling of disease mechanisms.

The discovery of targets and mechanisms is the "Mount Everest" of the pharmaceutical industry, and clinical trials are the "valley of death" in new drug development. A profound understanding of disease mechanisms is the only way to break through.Currently, PHIL RIVERS has successfully built two AI tool platforms —— New Target and New Mechanism Presentation Platform, Virtual Clinical Trial Platform, targeting six application scenarios: new targets, new mechanisms of action, new biomarkers, designing clinical trial protocols, predicting clinical trial outcomes, and expanding new indications.The company realizes commercial value through IP licensing, focusing on the development of drug IP assets with global rights, including new targets, new molecules, and new indications.

It is understood that,PHIL RIVERS is advancing multiple FIC (First in Class) pipelines, including those for pancreatic cancer. Meanwhile, several new indication development projects for already marketed anti-tumor drugs are also underway.PHIL RIVERS has identified multiple novel indications for CDK4/6 inhibitors that surpass hormone-positive, Her2-negative breast cancer. Clinical trials have been initiated for one rare and refractory tumor type, and relevant patents have been filed. Additionally, PHIL RIVERS has developed accurate efficacy prediction models for immunotherapy drugs. By designing various combination therapies and bispecific antibody strategies, they have overcome drug resistance, unlocking greater clinical value for immunotherapy drugs.

Zhang Chunming, founder of PHIL RIVERS, associate researcher of the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and executive vice president of the Western Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, stated: "Thank you for the foresight of this round of investors. The understanding of life and disease is the source of biopharmaceutical innovation. In the era of digitalization in life sciences, we are committed to establishing new foundational technologies for cognitive life, becoming an innovative factory for drug IP, bringing more innovative achievements to the industry, enhancing the efficiency of drug research and development, introducing new paradigms to drug discovery, and providing patients with more effective treatment solutions.”

Niu Gang, Co-founder of PHIL RIVERS and Director of Turing•Darwin Laboratory, said: “Computational Medicine’The mechanistic results provided by the platform can directly simulate the actual efficacy of drugs under the inclusion and exclusion conditions of clinical trials, seamlessly connecting biological experiments and clinical trials. This not only directly reduces the investment cost of new drug development but also significantly increases the success rate of Phase II/III clinical trials.”

Zhang Lan, a partner at VCBeat Capital, believes that "The application of artificial intelligence in new drug research and development has clear market demand. We are optimistic about the application of artificial intelligence in omics research, and establishing digital disease models is an important development direction. In this field, foreign companies have successively cooperated with leading pharmaceutical enterprises, and we are looking for companies with differentiated technical advantages and platform attributes in China. PHIL RIVERS' solutions have high barriers in disease modeling and have established leading advantages in the construction of proprietary core technologies and tool-based platforms.”

VCBeat stated, "In the field of AI pharmaceuticals, the ability to transform data elements into globally original IP assets is the most powerful indicator for evaluating the value of an AI platform. Over years of cross-disciplinary project practice, the PHIL RIVERS team has cultivated chief experts with interdisciplinary expertise. We greatly admire the perseverance and execution capabilities of the PHIL RIVERS team.AI + Disease"Driving differentiated innovation in drug development has great potential. We highly anticipate that PHIL RIVERS will continue to generate high-quality IP assets in the fields of new targets, new molecules, and new indications, promoting industry transformation and safeguarding human health."”

Haijingge Pharmaceutical Chairman and President Qi Xuebing said, "AI technology is profoundly influencing the model of clinical trials. PHIL RIVERS TECHNOLOGY Co., Ltd. utilizes its self-developed 'Algorithm + Computing Power + Knowledge + Data's core AI technology helps innovative drug companies evaluate more valuable indications, define patient characteristic profiles, optimize clinical trial design strategies, significantly save trial-and-error costs and R&D time for drug development, and improve the efficiency and success rate of drug R&D. We look forward to creating value for innovative drug companies together with PHIL RIVERS.”

First, computational medicine uses the holistic thinking of complexity systems science to understand the "emergent" new properties in the interactions among multiple biological hierarchical structures such as biomolecules, cells, tissues and organs, and populations, capturing the mechanisms of disease occurrence from a systemic perspective. Second, computational medicine adopts a data-intensive scientific paradigm to uncover new insights hidden in high-dimensional, high-throughput, multi-dimensional integrated biomedical big data. Third, computational medicine transforms knowledge models in the biomedical field into mathematical models, using biomedical big data as input parameters, and iteratively trains the models through artificial intelligence algorithms to output approximations of the structure and functional characteristics of real-life systems, thereby understanding the essence of disease occurrence. Finally, computational medicine relies on high-performance computing as the new-generation computing infrastructure, providing support for new scientific discoveries in terms of data storage, computational accuracy, and speed.