Echobiotech Secures Tens of Millions in A+ Round Financing to Strengthen Leadership in Exosome Research and Therapeutics

Following the completion of its RMB 100 million Series A financing in July 2021, Beijing ECHO BIOTECH Co., Ltd. (“ECHO BIOTECH”) has announced further good news: the company recently completed its Series A+ strategic financing.Led by Baidu Ventures, with follow-on investments from existing shareholders Taiyu Investment and Volcanic Stone CapitalThe successful completion of two major funding rounds fully demonstrates the capital market’s recognition of ECHO BIOTECH’s forward-looking strategic layout and sustained innovation capabilities in the exosome sector, and will accelerate its emergence as a pioneering leading enterprise with first-mover advantages in the field of exosomes.

For this round of financing,Kong Guanyi, CEO of ECHO BIOTECHStatement: We extend our sincere gratitude to both new and existing shareholders for their recognition and support. Since its establishment four years ago, ECHO BIOTECH has consistently upheld its corporate mission of “advancing medicine through biotechnology to benefit a better life.” The company is dedicated to the research and clinical translation of exosome technologies, having built a competitively advantageous platform for translational exosome medicine and an independently owned intellectual property platform for exosome-based drug delivery, thereby continuously driving industry development. Currently, the company focuses on two main business areas: translational medical research services based on exosomes, and the research and development of innovative drugs using exosomes as carriers. ECHO BIOTECH has assembled a stable core team, established a data-driven approach for rapid iteration, and cultivated core values of “altruism, continuous improvement, accountability, trust, enduring passion, and embracing change,” laying a solid foundation for the company’s future rapid growth. This round of financing will help the company build a higher-quality platform for engineered exosome research and translation.

As natural endogenous carriers, exosomes offer advantages such as low toxicity and side effects, low immunogenicity, and superior permeability, thereby facilitating drug delivery and absorption. Leveraging the innate carrier properties of exosomes, ECHO BIOTECH is primarily dedicated to the development of exosome-based platform technologies and therapeutic pipelines in the field of innovative exosome drugs. Its platform technology focuses on exosome engineering and modification, while its pipeline development mainly covers areas such as tumor immunotherapy and rare disease treatment. Currently, ECHO BIOTECH has achieved significant breakthroughs in multiple aspects, including exosome engineering, large-scale production, purification processes, and quality characterization, thereby establishing its own competitive barriers. The company has established a 3,000-square-meter pilot-scale workshop in Daxing, Beijing, which was scheduled to be fully operational by June 2022. The introduction of this round of financing will support the construction of an innovative exosome drug development platform and further accelerate the progress of clinical pipeline development.

Zhao Libo, Co-founder and CTO of ECHO BIOTECHIt is stated that engineered exosomes represent a platform technology. We are particularly optimistic about the application prospects of this technological pathway in drug delivery, especially for large-molecule therapeutics. This endeavor is highly challenging and remains in its nascent “zero-to-one” stage globally. There is still a considerable distance to go before achieving the goal of “actively delivering active ingredients to cells in different target organs via systemic administration,” and several key technical issues remain to be resolved. After several years of refinement, ECHO BIOTECH has accumulated multiple core technologies and established its proprietary engineered exosome technology platform, initially enabling parallel R&D across multiple pipelines. With the commissioning of its GMP pilot-scale production facility, ECHO BIOTECH is poised to become one of the first companies in China capable of producing engineered exosomes in compliance with GMP requirements. At that time, ECHO BIOTECH’s engineered exosome platform will be made available to external partners as a mature solution, fostering win-win collaborations to advance the development of innovative drugs in China.

In the field of translational medicine research on exosomes, ECHO BIOTECH has spent over four years continuously refining and iterating its exosome-based technical service products. This effort has resulted in a diverse product portfolio comprising more than 30 items, including high-throughput multi-omics solutions with exosome omics as the core competency, and translational medicine research solutions centered on exosome engineering and large-scale production. ECHO BIOTECH primarily collaborates with clinical experts and biotechnology enterprises to conduct scientific research. To date, it has established partnerships with more than 100 renowned Grade A tertiary hospitals and research institutions in China, achieving a series of significant outcomes: publishing over 80 SCI-indexed papers, filing 16 invention patents, receiving five certifications for New Technologies and New Products of Beijing, participating in the drafting of expert consensus statements on exosomes, and jointly organizing the "Exosome Grand Lecture Series" with the Cell Extracellular Vesicle Research and Application Professional Committee of the Chinese Research Hospital Association (CSEV), which has hosted over 40 expert lectures. Moving forward, ECHO BIOTECH will continue to monitor the latest frontier research in exosomes, deepen the development of underlying technologies, and consistently deliver optimal exosome technical service solutions.

Li Zhi, Co-founder of ECHO BIOTECH and General Manager of the Translational Medicine Division for Exosomes, stated: “As a revenue-generating unit of the company, our Translational Medicine Division has refined the ‘125 System’ over four years to drive stable corporate development. This system comprises one employee training and growth framework, two business lines (exosome omics and engineered exosomes), and five experimental platforms (exosome omics platform, bioinformatics platform, engineered exosome platform, exosome quality characterization platform, and in vitro and in vivo activity validation platform for exosomes). A stable organizational structure combined with a robust institutional system empowers internal employee growth while continuously creating value for external customers. Furthermore, rather than indiscriminately expanding our scope, we focus closely on an ‘Exosome Plus’ strategy centered around exosomes. We concentrate resources on building high-standard exosome-related experimental platforms and developing innovative products. By serving research institutes, we strengthen our tracking of trends in basic science and pioneering exosome therapeutic research, maintain our foundational R&D and innovation capabilities, grasp the direction of cutting-edge exosome technologies and processes, and enhance our ability to provide unique exosome-related CRO/CDMO services to biopharmaceutical enterprises.”

ECHO BIOTECH prioritizes independent innovation. Since its establishment, the company has built a research and development (R&D) team primarily composed of individuals with master’s and doctoral degrees, assembling a multidisciplinary team of experts in molecular biology, cell biology, structural biology, virology, immunology, and bioinformatics. This team, enriched with extensive experience in pharmaceutical R&D and Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls (CMC), possesses robust capabilities in exosome research, independent innovation, innovative drug pipeline development, and industrialization. In late 2021, ECHO BIOTECH was approved to establish a Postdoctoral Research Station, providing a solid foundation for further attracting high-end talent in the field and promoting industry-academia-research collaboration.

In summary, leveraging its established advantages in exosome research, ECHO BIOTECH has completed strategic layout across key segments of the engineered exosome industry chain and is actively advancing the industrialization of exosome-based drug delivery. The company aims to prioritize the launch of exosome therapeutics that meet clinical patient needs in the near future, thereby contributing to public health.

Zhang Zihao, Investment Manager at Baidu VenturesStatement: Exosomes are regarded as novel clinical biomarkers for various diseases, including tumors, and hold promise as engineered drug delivery vehicles, attracting significant research interest in recent years. Globally, pipelines for engineered exosomes have entered the early stages of clinical development. ECHO BIOTECH was among the first in China to enter this field, boasting a pragmatic and highly experienced professional team. The company has completed the establishment of an innovative platform for engineered exosomes and secured core patent technologies, highlighting its prominent industry position. The inclusion of Baidu Ventures is expected to facilitate the R&D of related products and jointly drive the growth of both the company and the broader field.