Zhanqing Bio Completes Angel Funding Round with State-Backed Investment, Leading the RNA Editomics Technology Sector

VCBeat learned today that Zhejiang BIOTRANS Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “BIOTRANS”) has completed an angel round of financing amounting to several million RMB. The round was led by Anji Kequan Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), a firm with state-owned capital background. The funds raised will be primarily used for the continuous optimization of its core product, the RE-seq™ (RNA Editing Sequencing) platform, advancing the market expansion of scientific research services and translational medicine products, and preparing for IVD product registration applications.

BIOTRANS, founded in 2018, is the first technology-driven enterprise in China dedicated to the development and application of RNA editomics technologies. The company is committed to addressing the long-standing lack of high-throughput, standardized detection technologies for RNA editing—a key post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism—in clinical translation, thereby providing systematic solutions for exploring disease mechanisms, discovering novel biomarkers, and developing drug targets.

RNA editing, which precisely alters specific bases on RNA molecules, is closely associated with various major diseases, including cancer, neurological disorders, and autoimmune diseases. It is emerging as a highly promising reservoir of novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets. However, conventional analytical methods relying on standard RNA-seq workflows commonly suffer from low sensitivity, high false-positive rates, and inaccurate quantification, failing to meet the clinical and research demands for precise quantification at single-base resolution.

To address the aforementioned bottlenecks, BIOTRANS has independently developed China’s first high-throughput sequencing solution dedicated to RNA editing detection—the RE-seq™ platform. Reconstructed from first principles, this platform comprises three core technological modules: a high-fidelity, unbiased library preparation system that minimizes background noise at the source; a Spike-in internal control system for absolute quantification, enabling comparable analysis across samples and batches; and multi-dimensional RNA editing burden assessment metrics, providing comprehensive biological interpretation from the site and gene levels up to pathway-level insights.

Zhao Yuxiang, Founder of BIOTRANS, stated: “We thank Kequan Fund for its recognition of BIOTRANS’s technological roadmap and team. We aim to break down technical barriers and drive the industrialization of RNA editing, an emerging diagnostic field, through the continuous iteration of our RE-seq™ platform.”

In the realm of research-grade products, BIOTRANS has launched the OmniRE-seq® Research-Use-Only Detection Kit, the first commercially available RNA editing NGS library preparation product in China. This innovation transforms complex technical workflows into ready-to-use standardized modules. To date, this product and its associated services have supported over 150 research projects, in collaboration with more than 40 leading Grade A tertiary hospitals and research institutions across China, with related findings published in international journals such as Nature Methods and Cancer Research.

In the field of translational medicine, the company is advancing customized solutions for application scenarios such as investigator-initiated trials (IITs), providing end-to-end services including large-cohort sample testing, biomarker discovery and validation, and integrated analysis of editing profiles with clinical information.

To date, the Company has completed more than 850 research and service projects, with collaborative partners encompassing over 80 large public tertiary Grade A hospitals and medical colleges. Its sales network covers East China, Central China, South China, and other regions, and it has established research centers and offices in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Ningbo, Changsha, Hefei, Haikou, and other cities. The Company’s subsidiaries have been successively recognized as National High-Tech Enterprises, participated in multiple major national, provincial, and municipal special projects, achieved the commercialization of numerous technological achievements, and received investment from Zhejiang State-owned Assets in April 2024.

Kequan Fund was established in 2022. The fund was founded by a local state-controlled construction group, with Nanjing Zhongyiren Investment serving as the fund manager. It focuses primarily on early-stage and growth-stage projects in the fields of life health, biotechnology, and high-end medical devices, dedicated to identifying innovative enterprises with core technological barriers and clinical translation potential.