iCell Bioscience Secures Tens of Millions in Funding Led by Furon Investment to Advance Primary Cell Innovation and Global Expansion

Recently, MirrorQidian announced the completion of a financing round in the tens of millions of RMB, exclusively invested by Furong Investment. As a leading global supplier of primary cells in China, MirrorQidian possesses the largest and most comprehensive bank of primary cells and cell lines in the country. The company specializes in cell CRO, cell CDMO, and customized primary cell services, achieving remarkable success in establishing industry-standard cell resource repositories and advancing cell technology innovation. The funds from this round will be used to further develop the company’s product pipeline and build a new platform for cell technologies.

MirrorQi, formerly known as Saibaikang, a pioneer in primary cells in China, is committed to its vision of building a “global cell culture factory.” The company remains dedicated to the isolation, identification, production, and cultivation of high-quality human and animal-derived primary cells, cell lines, and other cellular products. It also provides Cell-CRO and Cell-CDMO services, as well as customized primary cell services, to support clients’ specific research needs.

Regarding this round of financing, Li Yuebing, Founder and Chairman of Mirror Qidian, stated: “We are deeply grateful to Furong Investment for its strong recognition of our cell technology endeavors. To achieve substantial corporate growth, our team will focus on both product development and technical services, allowing them to complement and advance in tandem. Our products will chart a new blueprint for the full spectrum of applications within the cell industry, while our technical services will set industry standards. Over the past nineteen years, our team has built a complete closed-loop cell industry chain driven by innovative spirit. Moving forward, we will continue to strengthen our foundation and pioneer new frontiers, striving to benefit humanity at the earliest opportunity and usher in a new era of cell therapy.”

Li Zhengxiong, Executive General Manager of Furong Investment, stated, “China has entered a new stage of development, with increasingly urgent demands and higher expectations for basic research and innovation. As a critical tool for scientific and technological innovation, primary cells hold significant strategic importance. Our company has long been deeply engaged in the primary cell industry. We strongly align with the team’s understanding of the sector and its strategic layout, and we look forward to working together to contribute to China’s scientific research and CGT industries!”

Innovation-Driven:

The company has achieved a considerable scale. Its success is rooted in its independent and innovative R&D capabilities, while the key to its triumph lies in its pioneering founding team.

Research-Driven:

Li Yuebing, Founder and Chairman, initiated the commercial exploration of cell technology in a laboratory at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in late 2003. He subsequently managed the early importation of overseas primary cells, establishing himself as a pioneer in China’s cell therapy sector.

In 2009, it pioneered the independent innovation, development, cultivation, and production technologies for primary cells, becoming a trailblazer in the commercialization of primary cell products in China;

In 2014, the team integrated primary cell isolation technology with cell line culture technology, adding CRO experimental services and customized services for new cells, thereby creating a super cell factory that combines products with technical services.

Demand-Driven:

At the forefront of research demands, we customize primary cells with specific characteristics. Examples include naïve T cells; primary cells from humans or experimental animals of specific ages or disease models; and primary cells from rare experimental animal models, such as pigs, cattle, sheep, dogs, chickens, and ducks.

The Mirror QiDian team has successfully isolated and purified over 200 types of human primary cells and more than 60 types of human primary tumor cells, and has independently established over 100 cell lines using proprietary technologies. Additionally, the company’s cell bank contains more than 300 types of mouse primary cells, over 100 types of primary cells from non-model animals, and a repository of more than 500 traditional cell lines. The bank houses over 250,000 cell strains for scientific research and pharmaceutical R&D.

Each year, it supports thousands of basic research projects and papers in the field of cell biology for the nation, provides development support for cell tool product series to hundreds of domestic new drug companies, and establishes standardized culture systems for them.

Specialized Engine:

The Era of Cell-CRO and Cell-CDMO Is Dawning. With the continuous development and application of single-use systems in pharmaceutical manufacturing, the demand for customized liquid culture media is becoming increasingly urgent. Biological diversity dictates that serum-free media for mammalian cells exhibit personalized characteristics, necessitating custom development. Coupled with stringent regulatory oversight from health authorities, this results in high switching costs for biopharmaceutical companies when changing serum-free media suppliers, thereby fostering strong customer stickiness for the Jingxiang Qidian team.

Application Engine:

By establishing GMP-compliant laboratories that meet clinical-grade standards, recruiting a large number of international high-end talents in the cell industry, and implementing standardized assembly-line production of serum-free culture media filling, Mirror Qidian has fully integrated industrial channels across domestic and international medical, pharmaceutical, and healthcare institutions. This enables the regulated, large-scale production of pharmaceutical-grade and medical-grade culture media, laying a solid foundation for the blueprint of the “New Era of the Cell Age.”

Internationalization Engine:

The internationalization of cell-based businesses is an inevitable path for the sustained development of the cell industry. The company currently possesses a solid foundation to capture international markets, with key elements such as talent, technology, production capacity, and quality already in place, demonstrating strong momentum in its global expansion.

Twin Plan: Material Foundation & Conceptual Leadership

In the future, the company will continue to lead the new generation of technological revolution through a combination of physical infrastructure and forward-thinking concepts, becoming the bellwether of cell science.