Hygeia Medical Completes Nearly RMB 200 Million Series B Financing to Advance Minimally Invasive Cryoablation for Tumor Treatment

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that Hygea Medical Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Hygea”) has completed a new round of financing amounting to nearly RMB 200 million. This round was led by the Jianxing Healthcare Fund managed by CCB International, with joint investment from Kunying Capital and Shuncheng Capital. Following the completion of this financing round, Hygea will further strengthen its market coverage and channel development, accelerate the R&D progress of its product series, and launch its internationalization strategy.

Hygea is a national high-tech enterprise integrating R&D, production, and sales. The company focuses on the development of innovative medical products in the field of “Oncology · Minimally Invasive · Cryotherapy,” leveraging biomedical engineering and intelligent equipment manufacturing technologies to research, develop, and produce composite minimally invasive ultra-low temperature cryoablation systems for tumors, providing a series of minimally invasive interventional treatment solutions for oncology.

The Combo Knife was developed by a research and development team led by Professor Liu Jing, who holds joint appointments at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University, following nearly two decades of technological breakthroughs. The device overcame the technical bottleneck in the miniaturization of liquid nitrogen cryoprobes and pioneered the percutaneous puncture clinical application of liquid nitrogen cryoablation products. It also proposed and implemented, for the first time both domestically and internationally, a combined treatment modality and technical solution integrating ultra-low temperature cryotherapy with high-intensity thermal therapy.

Since its market approval in 2017 through the “Innovative Medical Device” special channel, the Kangbo Knife has been adopted by more than 40 renowned medical institutions across China, including the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Peking University Cancer Hospital, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Peking University First Hospital, the Fifth and Sixth Medical Centers of the PLA General Hospital, and Dongfang Hospital of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. To date, nearly 1,000 minimally invasive ultra-low temperature cryoablation procedures using the Kangbo Knife have been performed.

The ComboKnife employs a minimally invasive percutaneous interventional approach to deliver targeted physical ablation of tumor tissue. It innovatively integrates the advantages of deep cryoablation and high-temperature hyperthermia, achieving a broad temperature range from -196°C to 80°C within a single micro-probe. This breakthrough overcomes the limitations of conventional standalone cryotherapy or hyperthermia by combining their respective strengths, offering benefits such as safety, high efficacy, and painlessness.

The Conbo Knife can be used for radical resection of early-stage malignant tumors as well as for cytoreductive therapy in advanced-stage cancer. It is currently widely employed in the treatment of solid tumors, including lung cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer, renal cell carcinoma, prostate cancer, bone tumors, and soft tissue sarcomas. Clinical applications have demonstrated favorable efficacy and advantages, particularly offering new hope and therapeutic options for patients who are not candidates for conventional surgery, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy.

Minimally Invasive Tumor Ablation Therapies Include Thermal and Cryoablation. Treatment modalities such as radiofrequency, microwave, and high-intensity focused ultrasound fall under the category of thermal ablation. Cryoablation has garnered significant attention due to its numerous advantages: it allows for real-time monitoring under CT or ultrasound guidance, ensuring well-defined treatment margins and precise, visualized, and controllable treatment ranges; it is painless, does not require general anesthesia, and offers a favorable safety profile; and it is well-tolerated by patients. Notably, cryoablation preserves the microscopic macromolecular structures and other bioactive substances within tumor tissue, thereby stimulating the body’s immune response. In some patients, this can induce a remarkable abscopal effect (also known as heterotopic tumor suppression), leading to the shrinkage or disappearance of lesions at distant sites.

The unique combined cryo-thermal ablation therapy of the Kangbo Knife initially destroys vascular endothelial cells through freezing, altering the protein-affinity properties of intracellular tissues and increasing thermal sensitivity. Subsequent hyperthermia induces vascular hypoxia, and the rise in temperature accelerates the destruction of cancer cells. During the freezing process, minor thermal stress causes microstructural changes, while significant thermal stress during heating leads to mechanical damage, thereby achieving more effective destruction of tumor cells and microvasculature for enhanced therapeutic efficacy. Meanwhile, studies have shown that combined cryo-thermal treatment releases substantial amounts of HSP70, which can induce myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) to differentiate into mature dendritic cells, increase immune presentation, and enhance the activation of effector T cells (CD4+ and CD8+ T cells). Combined cryo-thermal therapy increases cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) infiltration and induces immune cells to enter tumor debris. The acute IL-6 induced by combined cryo-thermal treatment plays a crucial role in initiating cascading innate and adaptive anti-tumor immune responses, leading to CD4+ T cell differentiation, thus demonstrating that the combined cryo-thermal ablation technology has a stronger ability to induce systemic immune responses.

Furthermore, compared to traditional cryoablation devices, the ComboKnife employs an ultra-low-temperature ice ball to encircle and ablate tumors, followed by rapid high-temperature heating to eliminate the risk of needle-track seeding and significantly reduce the bleeding propensity associated with conventional cryoablation. Moreover, the ComboKnife’s combined cryothermal therapy technology involves no ionizing radiation damage or electromagnetic interference, ensuring no adverse effects on implanted pacemakers. This allows patients with pacemakers to undergo the procedure safely, offering excellent compatibility and substantially broadening its clinical applicability.。

In terms of product design, the Combo CryoKnife ingeniously utilizes liquid nitrogen—a common and readily available substance—as its primary consumable. This approach offers low operating pressure and enhanced safety, while also significantly reducing the usage costs of minimally invasive tumor cryoablation equipment. In contrast, existing argon-helium cryoablation devices employ throttling refrigeration technology that requires high-pressure argon and helium gases. Helium is a rare gas indispensable to national defense, aerospace, and the development of high-tech products; it is strategically important to nations worldwide. Currently, reliance on imports from countries such as the United States and Qatar persists, resulting in high costs and significant vulnerability to geopolitical influences.

Huang Qianfu, founder of Hygea, stated: “From the outset of our venture, we aimed to develop a fully independent, original high-end domestically produced medical device, break the long-standing monopoly of foreign manufacturers in the large-scale medical equipment market, significantly reduce the treatment costs of tumor cryoablation, and vigorously promote the development of industries related to minimally invasive tumor therapies.”。”

Huang Qianfu stated that in Europe and the United States, with a combined population of approximately 1 billion, there are about 2 million minimally invasive ablation procedures performed annually. In contrast, China, with a population of 1.4 billion, conducts only 200,000 such procedures each year. Therefore, it is projected that over the next decade, driven by the rising incidence of cancer, the number of minimally invasive ablation procedures in China will maintain an annual growth rate of 25%.

Leveraging its years of expertise in cryotherapy, oncology, and minimally invasive procedures, Hygea will align its innovative medical technology strategy with national strategic priorities, further increasing resource investment to vigorously develop a future-oriented series of solutions for minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Beijing Jianxing Medical Health Industry Equity Investment Fund (“Jianxing Medical Fund”) is a professional equity investment fund actively managed by CCB International and with operational participation from the New Airport City Fund. The fund was jointly established under the organization of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology and the Daxing District People’s Government, with capital contributions from the Beijing High-Precision Advanced Industry Development Fund and the Daxing Development Guidance Fund. The fund focuses primarily on high-quality growth-stage projects in innovative drugs, high-end medical devices, and smart healthcare. Leveraging Beijing’s and Daxing District’s robust biopharmaceutical industrial foundation, CCB International’s full-industry-chain financial service capabilities, and the investment team’s extensive fund management experience, the fund promotes the commercialization of biopharmaceutical technological achievements and drives the optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure. The CCB Medical Funds are a series of equity investment funds established by CCB International to deploy its healthcare industry strategy within mainland China. Funds under management include CCB Medical Fund Phase I, Jianxing Medical Fund, and CCB Medical Growth Fund, forming a comprehensive, multi-stage, and multi-regional industrial layout.

Kunying Capital is a private equity investment firm focused on long-term investments in strategic emerging industries, including innovative technology, healthcare, Internet 5G and SaaS applications, and retail consumption. Kunying Capital is committed to growing alongside its portfolio companies, actively empowering them to help expand their scale and strengthen their market position.

Shuncheng Capital

Beijing Shuncheng Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. is a specialized fund management company established with the support of Zhongguancun Equity Trading Services Group. Focusing on new technologies as its primary investment direction, the company concentrates on the broader health sector, particularly in medical devices. It maintains close collaborations with the Beijing Equity Exchange and multiple technology parks to facilitate the incubation and development of medical device enterprises, aiming to achieve superior returns through high-growth value investing.