Bairui Bio Completes Tens-of-Millions RMB Angel Funding to Advance High-Strength Absorbable Sports Medicine Products for Import Substitution

VCBeat learned第一时间 that Bairui ShengwuKeji, an absorbable medical device platform enterprise located in Ningbo Yinzhou Donghong Industrial Park, has recently completed an angel round of financing worth tens of millions. This round of financing was led by Lingjun Health Fund, with Ningbo Angel Guidance Fund participating in the investment.

This round of financing will be used for the industrialization of domestically produced high-strength absorbable sports medicine products, aiming to change the situation where such products in the sports medicine field have been completely reliant on imports for many years. Meanwhile, it will also strengthen team building, leveraging the core technology and industrialization experience of the existing team to create an absorbable medical device platform.

Sports Medicine Mainly Used for Joint and Soft Tissue Injury Treatment and RehabilitationSports medicine is mainly used for the treatment and rehabilitation of joint and soft tissue related injuries. It can be widely applied in clinical settings to diseases of the shoulder, hip, knee joints, as well as small joint conditions. In the context of a nationwide fitness movement, sports medicine has become the fastest-growing and most promising branch in the field of orthopedics. The market for sports medicine products is rapidly expanding with a compound annual growth rate of over 20%. The market size reached 3.9 billion yuan in 2021 and is expected to reach 6 billion yuan for implants and supporting tools by 2025.

Absorbable sports medicine products address issues such as the inability of traditional sports medicine devices to undergo MRI examinations, difficulty in revision surgeries, permanent space occupation, stress concentration at anchor points, and imaging obstruction. Within three years of implantation, these products can achieve in vivo absorption of the implant and bone ingrowth at the defect site, reaching the most ideal state for tendon and fracture repair. Therefore, the clinical attention towards biodegradable materials used in sports medicine is high, and once on the market, they are expected to quickly capture the sports medicine market. However, the main concern clinicians have with absorbable products is their strength. Compared to PEEK material, absorbable materials generally exhibit weaker strength. Many clinicians report that absorbable products tend to be brittle, often breaking during insertion or experiencing internal fixation failure during clinical use.

Abroad, self-reinforcement technologies mastered by countries such as Japan and Finland can achieve mechanical properties, such as bending strength, for absorbable orthopedic products that are higher than the strength of cortical bone. These properties are 2 to 3 times those of ordinary injection-molded absorbable products, meeting clinical requirements for fracture fixation and tendon repair. In China, domestically produced absorbable orthopedic products have been used clinically since 2004. However, the strength of all industrially produced absorbable orthopedic products in China is equivalent to that of simple injection-molded products, which is only 30% to 40% of imported products. This often leads to breakage during insertion and internal fixation failure, significantly limiting the clinical application of domestically produced absorbable orthopedic products.

After a decade of technical research and process exploration, the core team of Bairui ShengwuKeji has developed products with strength comparable to imported ones, and some mechanical properties are about 20% higher than imported products. They have also become the only team in China to industrialize the self-reinforcement core technology of absorbable orthopedic products and achieve large-scale clinical application. Bairui ShengwuKeji is currently applying this core technology in the field of sports medicine to address issues such as insufficient strength and easy breakage during insertion of absorbable sports medicine products. This product is expected to quickly capture the sports medicine market after its launch.

Founder of Bairui ShengwuKeji, Zhang Junping, stated: "First of all, we would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the Leading Health Fund for their recognition of our company. In the context of nationwide fitness, sports medicine has become the fastest-growing and most promising specialty within orthopedics. Absorbable sports medicine products provide strong internal fixation during the early stages of implantation, and three years later, the implants completely degrade in the body while achieving bone ingrowth, reaching the optimal state of treatment. However, domestically produced absorbable sports medicine products are heavily reliant on imports, which are expensive and limit their clinical use. Our team has been engaged in R&D and industrialization in the absorbable medical device field for nearly a decade. The absorbable trauma products developed and industrialized by our team have overcome the issue of insufficient strength that previously rendered absorbable orthopedic products clinically impractical. Our core technology can enhance the strength of absorbable products to match imported ones, achieving 2-3 times the strength of currently available Chinese products. Bairui ShengwuKeji has chosen absorbable sports medicine as its first project, aiming to leverage our core technology and experience in industrialization and clinical registration to quickly achieve high-strength mass production of absorbable sports medicine products, thereby realizing import substitution."

Ning Chenxi, Vice President of Leading Health Fund Investment, stated: "We are highly honored to collaborate with the outstanding team at Bairui ShengwuKeji. Their solid technical expertise and strong innovative capabilities in absorbable orthopedic products have greatly impressed us. Through nearly a decade of technological breakthroughs and industrialization efforts, the team has successfully overcome the technical barriers in the production of high-strength absorbable materials previously monopolized by foreign countries, effectively addressing the weakness of low strength in domestically produced absorbable sports medicine products. We are eagerly looking forward to Bairui ShengwuKeji leading China-produced absorbable sports medicine products into a new era where they can compete head-to-head with imported brands."