Hechen Bio Secures Tens of Millions of RMB in Angel Funding Led by HuaGe Capital

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that Hechen Bioworkx has completed an angel financing round worth tens of millions of yuan. Hechen Bioworkx is the first enterprise successfully incubated by the Hefei Institute of Advanced Functional Molecules to secure market-oriented financing.This round of financing was exclusively invested by Hygeia Capital.This round of financing will be used for the construction of pilot production lines, product R&D, and team expansion.

Hechen Bioworkx, established in May 2022 in the Hefei High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, is a synthetic biology company dedicated to the research and development and industrialization of functional active ingredients.The founding team hails from leading domestic and international enterprises such as Unilever, Yili Group, and Jianfeng Group, boasting nearly two decades of accumulated expertise in engineering technologies and extensive industrialization experience in the field of functional active ingredients. Their capabilities span strain engineering, fermentation, extraction processes, scale-up manufacturing, product formulation solutions, and market channels. The company’s co-founder and Chief Scientist is Professor Xi Xixian, Director of the Key Laboratory of Industrial Fermentation Microbiology, Ministry of Education, at Tianjin University of Science and Technology. Professor Xi has long been engaged in scientific research and industrial development in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, achieving a series of innovative results in the synthesis of amino acids and their derivatives through synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. He has developed a range of high-value-added amino acid products, with more than twenty achievements successfully commercialized, generating significant economic benefits.

In May this year, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) released the “14th Five-Year Plan for Bioeconomy Development,” proposing to accelerate scientific and technological innovation in biology and its industrial application, build national strategic scientific and technological capabilities in biotechnology, promote the extensive integration and empowerment of biotechnology across multiple sectors, and foster new technologies, industries, business formats, and models in the biological field. The development plan repeatedly mentions “synthetic biology” and explicitly emphasizes efforts to strengthen and expand the bioeconomy. Currently, major global economies—including the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Japan—have already focused on and deployed resources in synthetic biology, making it a hotspot for the next round of global R&D and commercial development. On September 12, U.S. President Biden signed an executive order encouraging domestic biotechnology production and research, aiming to enhance America’s biomanufacturing capabilities, reduce prices, and “strengthen supply chain security,” with specific mention of “reducing dependence on China.”

As a synthetic biology enterprise, Hechen Bioworkx is dedicated to achieving the scaled production and green manufacturing of key functional active ingredients, such as functional nutritional components and bioactive compounds, through the construction and optimization of efficient microbial cell factories.Compared with some conventional strain construction techniques, the company relies on Professor Xiexian Xie’s years of accumulation,By combining rational metabolic engineering with irrational evolutionary engineering, we have established a highly efficient platform for strain construction and screening. The company’s technical approach organically integrates the advantages of rational design and irrational screening methods, enabling the rapid development of high-efficiency engineered strains for product synthesis that exhibit high genetic stability and significant potential for industrialization.

Meanwhile, leveraging its extensive market experience and industrially scalable technologies, the company has established a “5+6+X” product portfolio, comprising “five high-value-added products,” “six bulk commodities,” and “multiple potential pipeline products.”The company will independently manufacture high value-added products, while collaborating with large-scale enterprises for the production of certain high-volume items, leveraging their mature manufacturing systems to achieve mass production. Its products can be applied in areas such as beauty and personal care, nutrition and health, animal and plant protection, and composite materials. Furthermore, the company will focus on the formulation of functional active ingredients and research into functional formulations, addressing issues related to stability, compatibility, and bioavailability of active functional factors during application. By integrating “functional ingredients + formulation technology,” it provides comprehensive technical application solutions to end customers across various industries, including beauty and personal care, nutrition and health, animal and plant protection, and composite materials, thereby helping them enhance the competitive advantage of their differentiated products. To date, the company has reached cooperation intentions with multiple domestic and international cosmetics companies and ODM/OEM enterprises.

Dr. Yu Hongjian, Co-founder and CEO of the Company, stated: We will start with small, technologically mature products to establish a solid foundation for our R&D, production, formulation, and sales systems. In the future, rather than relying on a single technology to drive a specific product or expecting one product to dominate the market, we aim to build an open and inclusive R&D system, as well as a customer-oriented product solution framework, underpinned by foundational platform technologies in synthetic biology focused on rare amino acids and flavonoid compounds. In the long run, only synthetic biology companies with comprehensive technological systems can create value for customers and achieve competitive success in the market.

Dr. Du Jiangbo, Managing Partner at Hygeia Capital, stated: The core team of Hechen Bioworkx boasts an average of nearly 20 years of industry experience, with capabilities spanning strain engineering, fermentation and extraction processes, scale-up manufacturing, product formulation solutions, and market channels. Leveraging its foundational platform technologies in “synthetic biology-based rare amino acids and flavonoid compounds,” the company has successfully transitioned from the laboratory to industrial application, systematically establishing a pathway for commercialization and building a well-structured product development framework. Hygeia Capital is honored to have served as the exclusive angel investor in Hechen Bioworkx and holds strong confidence in both the team and the company’s trajectory, believing that Hechen Bioworkx is poised to grow into a leading enterprise in the synthetic biology industry.

Hygeia Capital is a private equity investment management firm focused on the healthcare and biotechnology sectors, employing a dual-drive investment strategy that combines “VC investment” with “investment banking services.” Its management team boasts extensive industry background as well as rich experience in venture capital and private equity investments. The firm’s portfolio includes numerous high-quality companies such as Kindly Medical Devices (1501.HK) [interventional medical devices], Cofoe Medical (301087.SZ) [personal lifecycle health management], Bestar [clinical CRO], Virology Biotech [new drug R&D], ZhiDao Bio [new drug R&D], Zhongyi Anke [vaccine R&D], Respri [inhalation formulations], Haibowei [new drug R&D], Shengsi Biotech [new drug R&D], Kaifu Pharma [new drug R&D], Huajian Future [new drug R&D], Junyue Pharma [device CRO], Xinuo Medicine [animal experimentation center], Ruiyi Tech [pharmaceutical CDMO], Better Micro Medical [interventional/implantable medical devices], Niuchuang Medical [interventional/implantable medical devices], Hanling Medical [interventional/implantable medical devices], Biaodu Bio [preclinical CRO], Junsai Bio [cell therapy], and Ruitai Biomedical [minimally invasive surgical medical devices], among others.