Hangzhou Tengdi Bio (20n Bio) Secures $3.3M Seed Funding to Advance AI-Driven Protein Therapeutics Platform

On December 17, 2021, Hangzhou-based 20n Bio (also known as Tengdi Bio), a company focusing on AI-assisted protein drug design, announced the completion of a $3.3 million seed funding round. This round was led by early-stage investment firm BlueRun Ventures China. The company will use this financing to expand its professional team, establish a robust protein drug design and screening platform, and carry out early-stage proof-of-concept for multiple oncology and other genetic disease pipelines. In recent years, BlueRun Ventures China has invested in biopharmaceutical companies such as BioMap and Beigene Bio, and will continue to focus on the biopharmaceutical sector.

Tianyu Zhu, Managing Partner of BlueRun Ventures China, stated: BlueRun Ventures focuses on investing in early-stage cutting-edge technologies and is very optimistic about the application of big data and artificial intelligence in the biopharmaceutical and healthcare fields. The integration of BT+IT will be one of the key directions we will continue to focus on. We hope to see the combination of information technology and industrialization promote the overall biopharmaceutical industry. The 20n Bio team has forward-thinking industry insights and implementation technology. Their protein design-based drug discovery platform and application scenarios are unique and broad, offering significant room for imagination. We are very pleased to lead this round of financing and support the company in its efforts to seek treatment solutions for complex diseases such as cancer.

20n Bio was registered and established in Hangzhou at the end of September 2021, with its R&D center located in Philadelphia, USA, a hub for biopharmaceutical science and technology talent. Dr. Ming Zhu, the founder, formerly served as an Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics at Duke University School of Medicine in the United States. Later, he held senior management positions in several leading biotechnology companies in the US and China and founded multiple AI-powered biotechnology companies.

As is well known, the vast majority of protein targets cannot be drugged by small molecules. Many targets lack effective binding pockets for small molecules, and it is difficult for small molecules to distinguish between homologous proteins, proteins before and after mutations, and proteins before and after modifications. Proteins, when used as drugs, exhibit much stronger performance in both binding and selectivity. However, due to the astronomical size of the search space corresponding to the amino acid sequences of protein drugs (the search space for an amino acid sequence of length n is 20ⁿ), the rational design of protein drugs has been a well-known challenge in the industry. With recent breakthroughs in protein design methodologies and the maturation of computational tools such as Rosetta and AlphaFold, tackling these challenges has gradually become possible. 20n Bio utilizes advanced computational design methods and high-throughput screening technologies to design novel protein drugs that target traditionally undruggable small molecule targets, thereby significantly broadening the boundaries of drug development.

"Over the past year, mRNA vaccines have successfully completed the proof of concept for in vivo protein production encoded by mRNA in terms of delivery, safety, functionality, and more. This has made it possible for protein drugs to be produced through mRNA encoding, sparking a new wave of development in mRNA-encoded protein drugs, such as cancer vaccines and mRNA-encoded bispecific antibodies," said Dr. Mingfu Zhu, founder and CEO of 20n Bio. "20n Bio has chosen the popular field of mRNA-encoded protein drugs but avoided obvious application scenarios, instead proactively laying out the design and development of protein drugs for novel application scenarios. Our team is composed of experienced scientists from interdisciplinary fields such as computational biology, molecular experiments, protein design, RNA biology, RNA delivery, and drug development. Through collaboration, we apply years of accumulated expertise to drug development."

Established just over two months ago, 20n Bio quickly formed a full-time team of five PhDs from top universities both in and outside China, with an average of nearly 20 years of work experience post-PhD. Dr. Chen Xiaole, the company’s director and R&D lead, previously served as the Vice Director of Antibody Engineering at Novarock, a U.S.-based subsidiary of CSPC Pharmaceutical Group, bringing extensive experience in antibody drug development. 20n Bio is actively expanding its team. The company has invited renowned structural biologist Dr. Zhou Yaoqi, protein design expert Dr. Cao Longxing—listed among the “35 Innovators Under 35 in the Asia-Pacific Region” by MIT Technology Review—and several other well-known professors in the field to serve as scientific advisors.

About 20n Bio: 20n Bio, a bio-startup invested by venture capital, was officially registered and established in September 2021. 20n Bio is committed to using artificial intelligence to assist in the development of novel protein drugs to address unmet clinical needs. The company's core technology platform combines advanced algorithms with high-throughput wet lab techniques to design and screen proteins that meet physicochemical, functional, and pharmacological requirements, targeting undruggable small-molecule targets. Starting with its technological platform, the company is actively advancing the development of pipelines for cancer and other genetic diseases. The company’s R&D center is located in Philadelphia, USA.