METiS Pharmaceuticals Secures Multi-Million Dollar Series Angel Funding Led by Frees Fund

METiS TechBio Completes Multi-Million Dollar Angel RoundRecently, VCBeat learned that METiS TechBio (METiS Pharmaceuticals) has completed an angel financing round worth several million US dollars. The round was led by FreeS Fund, with participation from Source Code Capital and strategic investment from XtalPi. China Renaissance Alpha served as the exclusive financial advisor for this financing. The funds will be used to simultaneously establish AI-driven pharmaceutical formulation optimization platforms in both China and the United States, and to advance the R&D of new formulation drug pipelines and preclinical formulation development in collaboration with domestic and international pharmaceutical partners.

METiS TechBio, incubated by XtalPi, was officially established in August 2019. The company specializes in AI-driven pharmaceutical formulation development. By leveraging technologies such as high-throughput formulation platforms and AI computing, it identifies formulation optimization conditions more rapidly, comprehensively, and intelligently, thereby accelerating the clinical advancement of complex molecule drugs.

METiS TechBio was co-founded by top scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and serial entrepreneurs. Dr. Caida Lai, CEO and co-founder of the company, holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT. During his doctoral studies, he served as a researcher at the Novartis-MIT Center, where he conducted research on drug crystallization and post-crystallization processes using computational models and data extraction. Meanwhile, he also founded AquaFresco, an AIoT (AI + Internet of Things) water purification technology enterprise, successfully commercializing innovative wastewater recycling technology. In 2017, Dr. Caida Lai joined the renowned management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he was responsible for digital strategy initiatives for large pharmaceutical companies.

“At that time, I observed two trends in the development of the pharmaceutical industry: first, the entire pharmaceutical supply chain is undergoing a digital and intelligent transformation, with the AI-driven drug discovery sector experiencing explosive, exponential growth. Furthermore, China, as an emerging player in innovative drugs, is entering the global market,” Dr. Lai Caida told VCBeat. “We aim to leverage our AI platform to accelerate pharmaceutical innovation and secure a pivotal position in the pharmaceutical value chain during this transitional phase.”

METiS TechBio Team and Scientific Advisors

Since 2017, Dr. Lai Caida has collaborated with Academician Chen Hongmin, also an advisor to XtalPi, to jointly incubate the METiS TechBio project within XtalPi. Academician Chen holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT and has held senior positions at prominent pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and AstraZeneca. She is also a serial entrepreneur in the pharmaceutical industry and an expert in drug formulation research. In 2000, while serving as Director of Formulation R&D at TransForm Pharmaceuticals, Academician Chen developed a high-throughput formulation technology platform. This platform and its R&D pipeline were acquired by Johnson & Johnson for over $200 million. In 2010, Academician Chen joined Kala Pharmaceuticals as Chief Scientist, where she successfully advanced laboratory technologies into two Phase III clinical trials/New Drug Application (NDA) stages, leading the company to its initial public offering in 2017. It was based on these successful entrepreneurial achievements in pharmaceutical formulations, rather than academic research outputs, that Academician Chen was elected as a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. At the end of 2019, Academician Chen joined the team as a Director and Scientific Advisor of METiS TechBio, leading the development of the company’s formulation platform.

Dr. Wang Wenshou, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of METiS TechBio, is an expert in small-molecule synthesis with years of extensive experience in the field of artificial intelligence. He previously co-founded Inkbit, a startup that leverages visual learning systems to achieve high-precision 3D printing of formulations and excipients. In addition, the core team at METiS TechBio includes several seasoned professionals in areas such as pharmaceutical manufacturing processes and digitalization of new drug development. Among them is Dr. Li Haiyan from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, who will serve as METiS TechBio’s Vice President of Technology for China.

“By leveraging Academician Chen’s high-throughput formulation technology platform, Dr. Wang’s expertise in integrating materials science with artificial intelligence, and XtalPi’s technologies such as cloud computing and quantum force fields, we have successfully incubated core algorithmic tools and experimental platform technologies,” stated Dr. Lai Caida. In September 2019, the METiS TechBio team decided to return from Boston to China to implement their technologies locally. Subsequently, METiS TechBio stood out in the Hangzhou Maker Competition, winning the second prize. With strong support from the government and enterprises, the company established its operations in the China-Australia Biomedical Industrial Park.

AI-Driven Innovation in Drug Development Has Become a Hot Trend in Recent Years“Leveraging AI technology to advance key stages of new drug R&D—such as target design, drug molecule design, and crystal form optimization—can significantly shorten the drug development cycle. Currently, approximately 90% of complex molecules in the R&D pipeline face issues related to bioavailability, solubility, and toxicity, leading to a 39% failure rate in preclinical molecular development. Traditional approaches rely on trial-and-error guided by expert experience; however, this method struggles to identify optimal formulation conditions and fails to enhance drug R&D efficiency,” stated Dr. Lai Caida.

METiS TechBio’s AI-Driven Pharmaceutical Formulation Development Platform integrates an AI reinforcement learning engine, cloud-based quantum force field calculations, and a formulation experimentation platform. Initially, the AI engine generates a high-dimensional Design Space (formulation library). Quantum computing is then employed to explore and screen this high-dimensional space for potentially successful formulation candidates, which are subsequently transferred to a customized formulation experimentation platform. Following experimental validation, the results are compiled into a big data repository. The AI reinforcement learning engine then utilizes this data to iteratively update the model through repeated learning cycles, thereby identifying optimized formulation conditions.

“Just like AlphaGo, the first artificial intelligence system to defeat a world Go champion, which possessed the ability to play against itself, along with computational power and simulation capabilities, as well as the capacity for self-experimentation and self-exploration, we aim to provide an AI-driven pharmaceutical formulation development platform. Through high-throughput computation and experimentation, we seek to explore the high-dimensional design space (formulation library),” stated Dr. Lai Caida.

METiS TechBio has horizontally integrated multiple formulation modules, including solid dosage forms such as crystals, solid dispersions, and sustained-release formulations with varying release profiles; liquid formulations such as conventional lipid-based preparations and surfactants; as well as complex self-assembling nanocarrier systems and macromolecular formulations.

Leveraging its self-developed big data computing and experimental platforms for drug formulation, along with the founding team’s extensive expertise in pharmaceuticals, METiS TechBio effectively utilizes artificial intelligence to integrate formulation experiments and computational platforms, thereby driving global optimization of drug formulations. Currently, METiS TechBio’s business focus is centered on two key areas: assisting pharmaceutical companies with preclinical formulation optimization, and developing novel formulation-based drugs characterized by low risk, low cost, short development cycles, and high therapeutic value.

Amid policy initiatives such as volume-based procurement and consistency evaluation, many domestic generic drug manufacturers are facing significant pressure to reduce prices, making industry transformation an inevitable trend. By leveraging AI-powered pharmaceutical formulation development platforms, it is possible to develop high-value new formulation drugs (Class II new drugs) at relatively low cost and risk, thereby bypassing patent restrictions and addressing clinical challenges such as low bioavailability and high toxicity associated with drug delivery.

 METiS TechBioAI Formulation Development Platform

Currently, METiS TechBio is collaborating with domestic and international pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, including XtalPi and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) of Harvard University in the United States. METiS TechBio plans to build drug pipelines in fields such as cancer and infectious diseases.

Dr. Lai Caida, Co-founder and CEO of METiS TechBio, stated, “Compared to other AI application scenarios such as target discovery and molecular design, formulation validation proceeds at a much faster pace. It typically takes about one year to enter human clinical validation, and three to four years to achieve drug approval or even market launch, resulting in a high success rate. METiS TechBio aims to occupy a key position in this value chain by leveraging our AI platform to accelerate formulation development efficiency and address pain points in medication through advanced drug delivery solutions, thereby bringing high-quality, efficient new drugs to patients. We are delighted to have secured support from top-tier investors in the AI and pharmaceutical sectors, including FreeS Fund, Source Code Capital, and XtalPi. This represents significant recognition for us, and we look forward to collaborating with them to continuously innovate and create value in the field of AI-driven drug development.”

Li Feng, Founding Partner of FreeS Fund, stated, “Since our investment in XtalPi in 2016, computation/AI-driven biotechnology has remained a core investment theme for FreeS Fund, including the currently surging field of AI-driven drug discovery. The METiS team boasts world-class interdisciplinary expertise spanning computation, chemical engineering, materials science, and pharmaceutics, while mastering advanced formulation design technologies such as nano-formulations, microspheres, and oral sustained/controlled-release systems. Even more remarkably, the team possesses practical experience in advancing multiple product pipelines through Phase III clinical trials to market approval. METiS’s proprietary high-throughput platform for formulation screening and optimization will provide critical data to fuel AI-driven new drug development in the future. As innovative therapies like gene therapy impose increasingly stringent requirements on administration and drug delivery, FreeS Fund is highly optimistic about METiS’s broad prospects in both providing technical services and developing innovative drugs, leveraging the synergy between computational methods and formulation design.”

Huang Yungang, Partner at Source Code Capital, stated, “Source Code Capital places significant emphasis on the application of AI in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors and continues to closely monitor innovation and transformation. The COVID-19 pandemic has further heightened societal expectations for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, increasing the demand for the adoption of new technologies and methodologies, such as those that can enhance drug discovery and development. METiS has identified a unique value proposition in the field of AI-assisted drug development. We look forward to the team bringing their extensive experience to China’s pharmaceutical innovation landscape, helping the industry and patients by improving the efficiency and quality of drug R&D. We have high expectations for this endeavor.”

Wen Shuhao, Chairman of XtalPi, stated, “XtalPi is optimistic about METiS becoming the most competitive team globally in this field. As a serial entrepreneurial team from MIT, they share strong common values driven by engineering and scientific innovation. Furthermore, the team possesses complementary capabilities, ranging from corporate operations to pharmaceutical industry expertise. In particular, Academician Chen’s decades of experience in formulation enable the team to deeply understand how to digitize the formulation process, thereby identifying the most effective AI application scenarios, and even approaching problems from the perspective of atoms and electrons. In this regard, XtalPi looks forward to leveraging its strengths in physics and AI algorithms through collaboration. We anticipate that once the METiS collaboration platform matures, it can be applied to both small-molecule and large-molecule drug development, with its market potential being particularly pronounced in the large-molecule sector. We see immense, virtually limitless potential for METiS.”

Zhou Xiang, Managing Director at China Renaissance, stated, “We are delighted to have assisted METiS in successfully completing its angel financing round. AI-driven drug discovery has emerged as a hot investment sector in recent years. In the face of the longstanding challenges of prolonged development cycles and high costs associated with traditional drug R&D, AI-assisted drug development can effectively shorten development timelines and enhance the pharmacoeconomic value of drugs. We were pleasantly surprised to find that METiS boasts a premier team configuration in the AI drug discovery field, which demands highly interdisciplinary talent. The team possesses profound expertise and extensive industry experience in both formulation optimization and artificial intelligence. We firmly believe that by leveraging AI to drive formulation optimization—a critical node in the development process—and continuing to refine its approach, METiS will break through more key bottlenecks in drug R&D and revolutionize the traditional R&D model.”