Lezhun Chip Completes RMB 35 Million Pre-A Financing to Advance Commercialization of Chemiluminescent Biochips

VCBeat has learned that on February 1, 2021, Lezhun Zhixin, a developer of biochip and testing platforms, announced the completion of its RMB 35 million Pre-A financing round. The round was led by Sinocare, with Shenzhen Ruixiangyuan as a co-investor, and Beituo Capital served as the financial advisor for this transaction. The funds will be used forConstruct production workshops and develop new products, while driving the market sales of the company’s chemiluminescent biochips, instruments, and procalcitonin chemiluminescence assay kits.

Lezhun Zhixin is an in vitro diagnostics company focused on the research, development, and commercialization of microfluidic biochip technologies.Biochips Developed by the CompanyCondensing the entire testing process onto a single small biochip to enable whole blood detection,Detection accuracy is comparable to that of imported products such as those from Roche,It effectively ensures the accuracy, speed, and simplicity of the testing.

Biochips are a class of rapid, efficient, and high-throughput bioanalytical devices or integrated analytical systems that can consolidate independent analytical processes—such as sample preparation, molecular recognition and reaction, signal detection, and signal amplification—into continuous, parallel, integrated, and miniaturized workflows.

Precision, speed, and simplicity are the three major demands of clinical laboratories in China, and biochips are a powerful tool to meet these needs. Currently, biochips have demonstrated significant commercial potential in fields such as disease diagnosis and new drug development, and are regarded as a critically important and strategically significant cutting-edge high technology.

However, Wu Pengcheng, General Manager of Lezhun Zhixin Company, pointed out: Since biochips span numerous disciplines, their R&D and industrialization are highly challenging; thereforeHigh-precision biochips are still lacking in the current market.Taking chemiluminescence as an example, the testing procedure for chemiluminescent assays is complex. Currently available chemiluminescent biochips on the market have altered the reagent reaction workflow by omitting certain steps, resulting in unreliable test results and posing greater challenges in the development of compatible reagents.

The Lezhun Zhixin team has broken through multiple key technologies in biochips, achieving the biochipLow-cost, mass-producible.The biochips developed by Lezhun Zhixin employ whole-blood testing, eliminating the need for pre-analytical specimen processing and streamlining the testing workflow. Their fully sealed design allows for operation in open laboratory environments. Notably, the company’s biochipsIt does not alter the reagent reaction process and is one of the few biochips worldwide to achieve gold-standard, full-process testing.The test results are precise, while simultaneously lowering the requirements for reagent development, truly achievingAccurate, simple, fast, and economical.

Currently, Lezhun Zhixin'sThe Whole Blood Chemiluminescence Immunoassay Analyzers 8000 and 1000 have been approved, and six reagent kits, including those for procalcitonin, human chorionic gonadotropin, and cardiac troponin, have obtained registration certificates., the products have entered numerous Grade A tertiary hospitals across China. Moving forward, the company will continue to refine its product portfolio around biochips, launching products such as cardiac marker kits, infection detection assays, and PCR biochips.

Wu Pengcheng stated, “The development prospects of biochips are beyond doubt; however, over the years, biochips that can ensure quality, control costs, and achieve large-scale industrialization have remained extremely rare, with most still confined to the experimental stage.Lezhun Zhixin has taken a significant step forward, delivering a major breakthrough to China’s biochip industry.“With the large-scale application of biochips, testing can be brought closer to clinical practice, which will greatly facilitate the deployment of assays such as chemiluminescence to primary care settings and even home-based scenarios. We believe that biochips have the potential to reshape the landscape of the in vitro diagnostics industry.”

As can be seen, biochip technology is gradually moving towards integration and systematization, with increasing attention being paid to the research of corresponding supporting reagents, instruments, and software. As a pioneer in domestic biochip and detection platforms, Lezhun Zhixin will continuously promote the application of biochips in the in vitro diagnostics industry. Wu Pengcheng introduced that in the short term, the company will focus on the chemiluminescence field, accelerating the commercialization process of its whole-blood chemiluminescence instruments and reagents, and fully leveraging the advantages of biochips in this area. Meanwhile, in the future, Lezhun Zhixin aims to become a biochip platform supplier, providing platforms for more reagent developers, integrating resources, and achieving mutual benefits.