XBIOME Completes Nearly $100 Million Series B Financing to Advance AI×BT Strategy

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned第一时间 that recently, Xbiome Co. Ltd. ("Xbiome"), which focuses on AI drug development in gut microbiome, announced the completion of a new round of financing. Thus far, the total amount of nearly 100 million US dollars in Series B financing has been fully completed. This is one of the highest financing amounts in China's microbiome industry recently. Xbiome has attracted investments from well-known domestic and international investment institutions such as Legend Capital, Gaorong Capital, Cloud9 Capital, FiveSource Capital, Primavera Capital, and Mountain Travel Capital, reflecting investors' confidence in Xbiome’s prospects in the field of microbiome drug development. The funds are expected to be used for conducting clinical drug trials, US and China IND application projects, and the research and development of candidate drug pipelines; at the same time, they will be used to actively promote commercial licensing and large pharmaceutical enterprise cooperation, accelerate internationalization, establish an innovation center in the United States, speed up the upgrading and iteration of the company's technology platform, unleash the potential of the "self-developed + platform empowerment" drug research system, and comprehensively launch Xbiome’s new "AI×BT" strategy.

Xbiome Co. Ltd.'s Co-founder and CEO, Yan Tan, stated, "We thank our investors for their recognition and support of the industry and Xbiome. Over the past year, the drugs independently developed by Xbiome have entered the registration clinical trial stage, and the company's platform and technology have also achieved rapid iteration. The global microbiome pharmaceuticals industry is evolving rapidly, and we hope to seize this opportunity to grow quickly while striving to empower the entire industry with Xbiome's technological achievements."

President of Legend Capital, Li Jiaqing, stated, "Legend Capital values technological innovation in the healthcare sector and has consistently focused on the deep integration of technology with the healthcare industry. Since the initial investment in Xbiome in 2019, our multi-year cooperation has seen Xbiome grow into one of China's leading microbiome drug companies. This year, it achieved a significant milestone by obtaining the first-ever FDA clinical approval in Asia for an FMT drug. The team led by Mr. Tan Yan has demonstrated exceptional comprehensive capabilities and boundary-expansion abilities, making extensive advancements in AI-driven drug discovery, microbial technology, bioinformatics, and synthetic biology, while collaborating with several renowned hospitals on clinical initiatives. We are honored to be part of Xbiome’s journey and remain highly optimistic about the company’s future development."

Vice President of Gaorong Capital, Le Beilin, stated, "The human microbiome, known as the 'second genome,' is crucial for maintaining health and controlling the onset and progression of diseases. Research in this field is thriving globally, and the microecological pharmaceuticals industry has entered the stage of practical application. Xbiome, as China's first AI-based microecological pharmaceutical company, has not only been a pioneer but also, since its early investment, we have continuously witnessed the team establish a complete closed-loop for drug development under the impetus of leading AI+BT technology, abundant clinical resources, and a high concentration of talent. It has already demonstrated strong capabilities with significant efficacy in clinical trials. We believe Xbiome will secure a position in the global microecological pharmaceuticals industry."

Ronnie Cao, founding partner of Cloud9 Capital, stated, "Computation-driven drug discovery is an innovative theme that Cloud9 Capital has long been focusing on and optimistic about, and microbiome-based drugs are a rising star in the biopharmaceutical field. The correlation between gut microbiota and other systemic diseases in the body is being validated, and the trend of academic discussions translating into scientific research achievements is becoming increasingly evident, offering significant room for development. In terms of talent, platform technology, and pipeline layout, Xbiome is a company that holds a leading position in this field both domestically in China and globally. As investors and collaborators, we are also pleased to see that the company has multiple R&D projects progressing simultaneously and achieving phased results. We look forward to Xbiome continuing to strengthen data accumulation and algorithm iteration, building a bridge between AI and life sciences."

Wu Yuan's managing director, Xu Tian Jing, stated, "Microecological pharmaceuticals are a new therapeutic direction we highly value. As a leading company in this field, Xbiome holds a world-leading position in both technology and product innovation. The clinical approval obtained from the FDA for its product, as a new drug modality, marks an important milestone. We believe that as algorithms and data play an increasingly critical role in new drug development, China, with its advantages in clinical resources and data algorithm capabilities, will definitely see the emergence of a new generation of biotechnology companies capable of continuously producing products with high clinical value."

Zou Ling, co-head of Chunhua Venture Capital, said, "We are very pleased to continue supporting the growth of Xbiome. As a leading AI-driven microbiome pharmaceutical company in China, Xbiome has a comprehensive drug pipeline layout and advanced scientific research progress. Over the past year, under the leadership of Dr. Tan Yan, Xbiome has made significant progress—not only did their pipeline enter clinical trials for the first time, but the team's technical expertise has also grown stronger. Looking ahead, we expect Xbiome to achieve greater breakthroughs in technology, algorithms, and clinical implementation, reaching world-class standards and becoming a great microbiome pharmaceutical enterprise."

Xu Shi, founding partner of Mountain Travel Capital, stated, "Research on gut microbiota is one of the most attention-grabbing frontier research fields in recent years within the realms of medicine, microbiology, genomics, and others. It has a broad range of beneficiaries and market potential. The diversity of biological samples in China, as a populous country, provides a foundation for gut microbiota research. Particularly in terms of innovation, China's leading big data capabilities and infrastructure also offer innovative conditions for research in this field. Dr. Tan Yan leads a world-class professional team covering areas such as bioinformatics, efficacy evaluation, strain screening, and excipient processes, forming an excellent cross-disciplinary organization spanning from users to industry, and from science to commerce. This also enables Xbiome to possess the ability to efficiently transform microbiome drug research into industrial application, greatly enhancing the possibility of making this field a successful pharmaceutical reality."

Founded in 2017, Xbiome is currently a leading AI pharmaceutical company in China that focuses on gut microbiome therapeutics. Xbiome aims to alleviate or treat diseases by utilizing live biotherapeutics and microbial small molecule modulators through microbiological technology and bioinformatics.

During the Series B financing period, in June 2021, one of Xbiome's fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) drugs received clinical approval (IND) from the U.S. FDA and officially entered the clinical trial stage. According to public data from the U.S. FDA, this is the first approved FMT drug within Asia. Currently, significant progress has also been made in the project’s application process in China, with a Pre-IND application recently submitted to the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) of the National Medical Products Administration.

Xbiome's XBI302 Gut Microbiota Capsule Under Research (Image Source: Xbiome)

Currently, Xbiome has five self-developed First-in-class microbiome drug pipelines and has established clinical collaborations with many renowned hospitals in China, such as Peking University Cancer Hospital, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University. Multiple clinical drugs have demonstrated significant efficacy.

At the same time, Xbiome actively expands its drug pipeline through commercial licensing and co-development partnerships. In May 2021, the company entered into a co-development agreement with 3SBio for the use of full-microbiota capsules in treating kidney diseases. Within just four years of its establishment, Xbiome’s drug pipeline has achieved comprehensive coverage of the main drug modalities in microbiome therapeutics, demonstrating the company's efficient ability to translate scientific research into industrial applications in microbiome-based drug development.

The rapid capability to implement and transform stems from Xbiome's significant investment in its drug development platform and its high regard for scientific research. Xbiome has established an advanced bioinformatics analysis platform and a transformation and production platform,打通从“数据”到“药物”的转化全链路，实现微生态药物研发的完整闭环。

In the field of bioinformatics, in the past year, Xbiome's multi-omics computing platform has achieved computational power expansion, and the analytical capabilities of its clinical analysis platform have increased by 300% year-on-year. A brand-new drug discovery platform has been completed, with rapid iteration of AI algorithms. Significant progress has been made in data, computing power, analysis, and drug mechanism discovery, achieving data-driven pathology mining and constructing the mapping relationship between microbiome genomes, metabolic functions, and strains.

In the field of drug research and development, Xbiome has recently completed the construction of multiple live biotherapeutic product (LBP) R&D platforms, established a series of in vitro functional screening platforms and animal disease models, and advanced several LBP candidates into the preclinical development stage. The company has independently developed core technologies for live biotherapeutic fermentation and formulation, and built a CMC system that has reached consensus with the U.S. FDA.

In addition, Xbiome has been focusing on building an innovation research center in Boston, USA. The US-based team is rapidly expanding and will cover multiple fields such as bioinformatics, clinical, production, and industry in the short term, fully participating in the entire international industrial chain, including scientific research, industry cooperation, investment incubation, and licensing introduction. The team is also actively expanding international cooperation in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Silicon Valley, laying out innovative projects and future technology reserves.

In recent years, people's understanding of intestinal microbiota has deepened. In scientific research, multiple research achievements have been successively published in top journals, stepping into the spotlight of the academic stage. It has been discovered that there is a comprehensive and extensive interaction mechanism between microorganisms and hosts, which is closely related to health. Microecological drugs derived from microorganisms boast advantages such as abundant sources, high safety, short R&D cycles, high production volume, significant comprehensive effects, and a wide range of indications. It is estimated that the market scale that microecological drugs can penetrate reaches tens of billions of US dollars.

In the past year, the global microecological pharmaceuticals industry has seen frequent good news, with some oral drugs reaching the primary endpoint of phase III clinical trials. The capital market has also shown great enthusiasm for microecological pharmaceutical companies. Recently, the French biotech company MaaT Pharma completed its IPO in Paris, becoming one of the milestone events of the year in the industry.

In China, the microbial industry is a strategic direction that the state highly values. Currently, Xbiome, as a representative of domestic micro-ecological pharmaceutical enterprises, is on par with the world's leading level in terms of technology, and its pipeline is progressing rapidly. With advantages such as clinical resources, approval systems, and the number of versatile talents, it is expected to help China's innovative drugs achieve global overtaking.

Discussing Xbiome's next phase of development strategy, Tan Yan introduced that recently, the global micro-ecological pharmaceuticals industry has seen some star companies and star drugs, indicating that micro-ecological drugs have entered a mature stage of transformation. Xbiome will seize this development opportunity to launch a new "AI×BT" strategy – continuously optimizing the company’s business structure, further integrating AI and BT technologies and talents, advancing in both self-developed drugs and external empowerment, further improving the efficiency of micro-ecological drug transformation, and building a technologically competitive platform; developing multiple self-researched and License-in drug asset pipelines, and creating a leading microbial drug asset incubation platform in the industry.