Jinfan Pharma Secures Nearly RMB 100 Million Series A+ Financing to Advance In Vivo CAR-T and Strengthen CRO/CDMO Capabilities in Gene Therapy, Protein Drugs, and Vaccines

Recently, Genevoyager (Wuhan) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Genevoyager”) officially announced the successful completion of its nearly RMB 100 million Series A+ financing round. The round was led by Wuhan Hi-Tech Group Holding Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Wuhan Hi-Tech”), with participation from Wuhan Huagong Venture Capital Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Huagong VC”).

The sustained increase in capital market investment underscores the industry’s strong recognition of the company’s core technological capabilities, end-to-end service offerings, and future growth potential. This momentum provides robust impetus for the company to deepen its presence in the innovative drug CRO/CDMO sector and expand the boundaries of its core business, thereby reinforcing its competitive advantage through breakthrough patents that enable upgrades in precisely targeted niche areas, while strategically positioning itself in the emerging high-end biomanufacturing landscape.

The proceeds from this fundraising round will be primarily allocated to the synergistic upgrading of the company’s three core technology platforms: the Bac/Sf9 insect baculovirus expression system, HEK293, and CHO. This initiative aims to continuously build differentiated advantages through breakthrough patents in precise niche sectors, thereby solidifying core capabilities in high-end biomanufacturing. Meanwhile, the company will steadily advance capacity expansion and quality improvement, enhance the development of its core talent pipeline, and optimize its nationwide market layout. Focusing on strategic areas such as AAV gene therapy, vaccines, novel recombinant proteins (including new recombinant collagen for medical aesthetics and botulinum toxin-related products), in vivo CAR-T, and oncolytic viruses (AdV, HSV, VACV, VSV), the company seeks to further strengthen its end-to-end service advantages. These efforts will assist partners in accelerating the commercialization of their pipelines and promote the clinical accessibility and industrial scale-up of gene therapies, cell therapies, novel recombinant protein drugs, and vaccines.

Looking back on its development journey, Genevoyager has secured multiple rounds of capital investment, highlighting its strong growth momentum: In 2023, it successfully completed a Series A financing round exceeding RMB 100 million, jointly funded by SDIC Venture Capital and Hongxin Capital; in 2022, it closed a Pre-A round worth tens of millions of RMB, receiving strategic investments from Ningbo Runke, Yinglian Health Fund, Starry Sky Capital, and Optics Valley Talent Fund. The successful closure of these financing rounds has provided solid capital support for the company’s technological R&D, platform construction, bio-manufacturing capacity layout, and business expansion, while also underscoring the capital market’s high recognition of its technological pathway and development strategy.

As a dedicated player in the biopharmaceutical industry, Genevoyager always takes technological innovation as its core driving force and has built a full-chain CRO/CDMO service system with core competitiveness. The company relies on core patentsBac/Sf9 Insect Baculovirus Expression System,Targeted BreakthroughPurity, Stability, Safety, and Manufacturability of AAV Vector Productioncore pain points, while simultaneously addressing the key bottlenecks in the efficient preparation of recombinant proteins and vaccines. Leveraging its unique technological advantages, this system targetsAAV, Recombinant Proteins, and VaccinesThree major application scenarios cultivate differentiated professional capabilities, precisely matching the R&D and commercial production needs of different products.

In AAV vector production, this platform enables scalable and efficient manufacturing, achieving titers of 1E+15 to 5E+15 vg/L during scale-up. The recovery rate remains stable at ≥30% across scales from 5 L to 200 L, with minimal purification loss. Baculovirus vectors demonstrate stable passage stability and retain infectivity after storage at ≤-80°C for more than 24 months. Empowered by breakthrough patented technologies, the platform produces AAV vectors with low aggregation at high concentrations, consistent quality, high purity, and no replication-competent AAV contaminants. This effectively addresses critical challenges in gene therapy regarding safety and manufacturability. To date, it has supported multiple AAV drug candidates in completing IIT/IND filings (dual-track in China and the US), with gene therapy projects for Parkinson’s disease and refractory epilepsy successfully advancing into clinical trials.

In the production of recombinant proteins and vaccines, this system enables high-efficiency expression of exogenous proteins, proper folding of complex proteins, and comprehensive post-translational modifications. The resulting products exhibit high immunogenicity and are free from animal-derived components. Following optimization, the target protein demonstrates stable expression across passages P1 to P8, with purity and yield surpassing those of traditional systems. Notably, vaccine antigen productivity has reached a globally leading level. The system has been successfully applied in 200L-scale production of virus-like particles (VLPs), recombinant proteins, and GMP-grade vaccines, showing potential for scale-up to 1,000L. Furthermore, it has supported therapeutic vaccine projects for hepatitis B and cancer in completing Investigational New Drug (IND) applications and advancing into clinical trials.

In the field of lentiviral vector-driven in vivo CAR-T therapy, Genevoyager leverages breakthrough patented technologies to develop safer and more compliant HEK293 cell lines. By incorporating its proprietary patented VSV-G envelope, alongside a mature and stable process development system and rigorous quality control strategies, the company has established an end-to-end solution spanning vector design, process optimization, and quality compliance. This approach efficiently meets the R&D and manufacturing needs for in vivo CAR-T therapies, significantly enhancing vector safety, transduction efficiency, and production stability, thereby providing reliable support for innovations in cellular therapies for cancer and other diseases.

In terms of production capacity layout, Genevoyager has established standardized cGMP production workshops, equipped with four P2-level seed bank areas, five protein vaccine/virus production lines, and one filling production line. The protein vaccine/virus production lines cover two scales of 200L and 500L, with a maximum annual capacity of 50 batches, which can fully meet the large-scale production needs of different customers, providing solid production capacity guarantees for technology implementation and industrial empowerment.

Genevoyager cGMP Facility

Dr. He Xiaobin, CEO of GenevoyagerThe company stated that this round of financing will strengthen its core technologies and service capabilities, accelerate the upgrading of its three major platforms—Bac/Sf9, HEK293, and CHO—optimize processes, and expand production capacity. Leveraging standardized cGMP manufacturing capacity, it aims to provide global clients with efficient, compliant, end-to-end CRO/CDMO services, facilitating the clinical application of innovative therapies such as gene therapy and cell therapy in areas including systemic genetic diseases and oncology, thereby benefiting more patients.

Wuhan GaokeIt was stated that gene therapy and cell therapy represent one of the most promising development directions in the life and health sector. Genevoyager possesses profound technical expertise and mature CRO/CDMO service capabilities in core areas such as AAV vector preparation and recombinant protein development, which align closely with the biopharmaceutical industrial layout of Optics Valley. This lead investment will leverage the industrial resources and capital advantages of Gaoke Group to fully support Genevoyager in accelerating the construction of its three major platforms and expanding into frontier fields such as in vivo CAR-T, thereby helping the company establish itself as a premier domestic benchmark for gene and cell therapy CRO/CDMO services.

Huagong Venture CapitalIt was stated that the Genevoyager team possesses profound technical expertise and industrialization experience, having established unique competitive barriers in areas such as large-scale AAV production and lentiviral vector development, which aligns with the investment focus on “hardcore technology and achievement commercialization.” Huagong Venture Capital will continue to leverage its strengths in sci-tech innovation investment and alumni economy to empower Genevoyager’s technological iteration and market expansion, thereby accelerating the industrialization of cutting-edge biotechnologies.

Wuhan Gaoke State-owned Holding Group Co., Ltd., as the core state-owned investment platform of Wuhan East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, has always adhered to the goal of "developing high-tech and achieving industrialization." Focusing on strategic emerging industries such as life and health, it promotes the development of high-tech enterprises through capital empowerment. It has cumulatively invested in 159 enterprises, including 18 listed companies, with a total scale of investment funds exceeding RMB 30 billion, demonstrating strong capabilities in industrial resource integration and enterprise incubation. The company has successively invested in, constructed, and operated multiple modern industrial parks, continuously fostering an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem to promote technology application, achievement incubation, and industrial cluster development.

As the only technology transfer and incubation investment platform retaining university equity participation following nationwide reforms of university-affiliated enterprises, Wuhan Huagong Venture Capital Co., Ltd. boasts a robust shareholder base. This includes Huagong Tech, the Asset Management Company of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China Baowu Steel Group, Changyuan Power, Jingce Electronic, and other centrally administered state-owned enterprises with vice-ministerial-level affiliations, as well as leading listed companies in their respective industries. Adhering long-term to an investment strategy focused on “early-to-mid stage ventures, alumni economy, and hard-core technologies,” and through sustained, steady operations and development, Huagong Venture Capital has grown into the most science-and-technology-driven early-stage hard-tech investment and incubation platform in Central China, with outstanding brand influence.

SDIC Venture Capital, established in 2016, is a venture capital fund management company specially set up by China State Development & Investment Corp. (SDIC) on a market-oriented basis. Its mission is to implement the national innovation-driven development strategy, deepen comprehensive strategic cooperation with the Ministry of Science and Technology, and accelerate the transfer and commercialization of national scientific and technological achievements. Through platforms such as the National Science and Technology Major Project Achievement Transformation Fund, SDIC Jing-Jin-Ji Scientific and Technological Achievement Transformation Fund, SDIC High-Tech (Shenzhen) Venture Capital Fund, SDIC (Ningbo) Scientific and Technological Achievement Transformation Fund, and SDIC (Guangdong) Scientific and Technological Achievement Transformation Fund, SDIC Venture Capital remains committed to its investment objective of facilitating the commercialization of scientific and technological achievements. It focuses on key sectors including advanced manufacturing, electronic information, biomedicine, and materials and energy, while aligning with national regional development strategies such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The firm continuously promotes breakthroughs in independent innovation of core key technologies and strives to build a robust investment ecosystem for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements.

Shanghai Hongxin Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. is a professional institution engaged in the management of private equity investment funds, focusing on equity investments in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that possess excellent management teams, key business resources, and rapid growth opportunities. Leveraging extensive experience in both industrial operations and investment banking, the company provides not only capital support to SMEs but also, more importantly, post-investment assistance. This includes helping portfolio companies refine their business models, adjust operational strategies, integrate business resources, enhance sustainable operating capabilities, advance initial public offerings (IPOs) and listing processes, establish capital market financing platforms, and implement industry consolidation through these capital platforms. Ultimately, the firm assists entrepreneurs in transforming their invested enterprises into industry leaders.

Ningbo Runke Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership) was initiated by the Hyde Capital management team. The fund focuses on sectors such as biopharmaceuticals and medical devices, seeking to invest in startups with innovative potential within the broader healthcare industry. The fund’s management team possesses extensive investment experience and a proven track record of success in the capital markets, particularly in the fields of healthcare and advanced manufacturing. The team includes multiple national and provincial-level review experts in the investment sector and has previously initiated, established, and participated in the management of numerous equity investment funds. Adhering to the principles of specialized investment, standardized management, and market-oriented operations, the fund is committed to achieving commercial success for its portfolio companies through close collaboration with entrepreneurs.

Yinglian Health Fund is a venture capital firm focused on the life sciences sector. Its cornerstone investors are leading domestic pharmaceutical companies, while its limited partners (LPs) include national-level fund-of-funds, local government fund-of-funds, market-oriented fund-of-funds, and other institutional investors. Guided by research, the fund deeply explores global investment opportunities in frontier innovative drugs, biotechnology, medical devices, and related fields. It supports entrepreneurial teams with breakthrough technologies and strong execution capabilities, jointly driving innovation and progress in the healthcare industry.

Starry Sky Capital focuses on investments in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and life sciences sectors. It is an observing member of the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC), a council member of the Sichuan Investment Fund Association and vice-chairman unit of its Private Equity Special Committee, as well as a vice-chairman unit of the National Precision Medicine Industry Innovation Alliance. The company boasts a professional pharmaceutical investment team and has invested in numerous outstanding enterprises in the fields of innovative drugs, innovative medical devices, biotechnology, and innovative healthcare services. Adhering to the philosophy of “creating value through professionalism” and upholding the values of “simplicity and sincerity, professional focus, and long-term persistence,” Starry Sky Capital is committed to becoming a respected professional institution distinguished by excellent performance and a fulfilled team.

Optics Valley Talent Fund was established in 2015. Adhering to the core investment philosophy of “supporting talent-driven entrepreneurship and innovation, and growing together with talent-led enterprises,” the fund focuses on innovative startups in emerging and advantageous industries, with a particular emphasis on investing in and nurturing early-stage enterprises in emerging sectors and ventures founded by high-level talents. Leveraging its professional investment and incubation capabilities, Optics Valley Talent Fund has received numerous accolades, including being named to the “TOP 50 Best Early-Stage Venture Capital Institutions in China 2019” by ChinaVenture, “Hubei’s Most Active Equity Investment Institution of 2019,” “Hubei Outstanding Contribution Award for Venture Capital 2019,” and “Hubei Outstanding Contribution Award for Venture Capital 2020–2021.”

The successful completion of this nearly RMB 100 million Series A+ financing round not only demonstrates the capital market’s strong recognition of Genevoyager’s core technological capabilities, comprehensive business layout, and future growth potential, but also injects robust momentum into the company’s continued deepening engagement in the CRO/CDMO fields of gene therapy, cell therapy, proteins, and vaccines. Moving forward, Genevoyager will leverage the support from this financing round to continuously enhance its technology platforms and service systems, deepen collaborative synergy with partners, address industry pain points, and strengthen technological innovation. By doing so, the company aims to facilitate the high-quality development of the gene therapy, cell therapy, protein drug, and vaccine industries, empowering healthcare through technology and benefiting a broad patient population.