Metanovas Biotech Secures Nearly $10M in Series Angel Funding to Advance AI-Powered Anti-Aging Therapeutics

Recently, Metanovas Biotech, the first company in China to apply AI knowledge graphs combined with multi-omics analysis technology to address aging issues, announced the completion of nearly ten million US dollars in angel round financing. The round was jointly led by Danlu Capital and Jianyi Capital (formerly Sinopharm Capital), with Neux Capital participating. The funds will be used to advance external commercial cooperation projects and develop the company’s products in the anti-aging and metabolic fields.

Metanovas Biotech, founded in early 2021 in Boston, USA, and Shanghai, aims to combine artificial intelligence with life sciences. By utilizing deep learning, knowledge graphs, and multi-omics analysis, the company seeks to understand complex biological networks, decipher intricate disease mechanisms, and develop products by modulating disease network mechanisms, such as those for delaying aging and preventing neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases.

The founding team of Metanovas possesses a multidisciplinary background in artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, and biomedicine. Among them, the biomedicine team hails from world-leading AI pharmaceutical companies BenevolentAI and Atomwise, with work experience at the FDA, Sanofi, MSKCC, and Genentech; the AI engineering and business operations team comes from top universities and tech companies such as MIT, Yale, Stanford, NVIDIA, and Amazon. The founding team has published over a hundred high-quality papers in top artificial intelligence conferences and biomedical journals, garnering nearly ten thousand Google Scholar citations, and holds patents in both China and the United States.

Metanovas' existing technology platforms includeMeta-KG Knowledge Graph Platform, Meta-Omics Multi-Omics Analysis and Computing PlatformAndMeta-NLP Clinical and Literature Data Mining Platform.Among them, the Meta-KG knowledge graph platform integrates dozens of types of data, including targets, drugs, pathways, molecular functions, and natural products, constructing over 16 million nodes and hundreds of millions of knowledge pairs. Meta-Omics features a high-quality omics data integration and automation system, covering multi-omics data such as genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics.

Within one year of its establishment, the company has built several product lines and established co-development pipelines with top domestic research institutions and publicly traded pharmaceutical companies. Among them,The NAD+-related anti-aging research project jointly conducted by the company and the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Tsinghua University has achieved preliminary validation in in vitro experiments, with AI-predicted validation success rates far exceeding traditional wet-lab systematic screening levels.

Metanovas insists on understanding the mechanisms of aging with a scientific approach and developing anti-aging products with a rigorous attitude, thereby contributing to extending human lifespan. Aging is characterized by the progressive loss of physiological integrity, leading to functional impairment and increased mortality risk, making it a significant risk factor for human diseases. In recent years, major progress has been made in aging research, particularly in discovering that intervening in the body's inherent regulatory and metabolic processes can delay aging and extend lifespan to a certain extent. However, aging is a complex concept, phenotypically manifesting as degeneration in neurological and metabolic domains, and mechanistically potentially involving multiple factors such as genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic alterations, proteostasis imbalance, signaling pathway dysregulation, mitochondrial dysfunction, altered intercellular communication, and immune dysregulation. These factors are highly intricate and interconnected, often posing significant challenges to conventional research and development methods.Metanovas' extensive bio-network knowledge graph is adept at uncovering hidden mechanistic connections, comprehensively evaluating key pathogenic mechanisms, and predicting core targets.Therefore, it has a natural advantage in the research and development of multi-target and multi-mechanism products, providing a powerful tool for systematically solving the above problems.

In addition to the development of its own products, Metanovas also looks forward to cooperating with more partners for product development to fully leverage its unique and efficient AI technology platform, thereby benefiting society to a greater extent.

Li Jie, Partner of Biolure Capital (Biomedical)"It is an inevitable trend in the development of human technology to understand and prevent aging. However, aging in organisms is a complex systemic issue, and life networks possess strong robustness. Traditional approaches that rely on single methods to intervene in this intricate network are unlikely to yield significant results. We look forward to Metanovas' knowledge graph clearly presenting the full picture of aging and using it to design anti-aging products."

Wu Aimin, Founding Partner of Jianyi Capital (formerly Sinopharm Capital)Stated: "The unmet clinical needs for aging, neurological, and metabolic diseases are increasingly gaining attention nowadays, while the related drug development faces challenges. We highly recognize the potential of Metanovas Biotech to address this R&D and clinical pain point. Their team is experienced and possesses strong R&D capabilities. The combination of their AI platform and various data maps can find a needle in a haystack, providing the driving force for the development of relevant drugs. We are willing to move forward together with them and make joint efforts to improve public health."

Jing Xu, Founding Partner of Neux CapitalSaid: "As the foundation of new drug research and development, target discovery determines the speed and height of innovative product breakthroughs. Metanovas applies AI technology to target discovery and has pioneered a completely new mechanism. By deeply exploring and understanding multi-targets and multi-mechanisms, it is expected to solve complex issues related to aging. We are optimistic about Metanovas' innovative exploration in this field and look forward to this outstanding team accelerating the research and development of China's self-innovated products."