Nuowei Bio Completes Hundred-Million-Yuan Series B Financing to Advance Clinical Development of Nucleic Acid Therapeutics

(Source: Cell and Gene Therapy Field)

Recently, NEWISH completed a Series B financing round worth hundreds of millions of yuan. The investors include Kangcheng Investment as the lead investor, along with New Frontier Healthcare, Zhiyue Investment, and Qianyuan Fengqiong. It is understood that the funds raised will mainly be used for clinical research on the company’s core pipeline in development, optimization of its core technology platforms, and the subsequent development of innovative pipelines.

NEWISH Biotech is an innovative drug R&D enterprise focused on gene therapy and other fields, dedicated to developing First-in-class nucleic acid drugs with fully independent intellectual property rights. Leveraging the STARi (Super-Targeted Activation of T-cell Immune Response) nucleic acid drug development platform jointly developed with Academician Jiang Jiandong, the company strategically focuses on niche sectors with unmet clinical needs, such as precancerous cervical lesions and postoperative recurrence of liver cancer. Currently, multiple new drug candidates from the company have entered clinical stages. Among them, the therapeutic DNA drug for liver cancer, NWRD06, received Investigational New Drug (IND) approval in May 2023; the therapeutic DNA drug for HPV, NWRD08, was approved for clinical trials in October of the same year; and the therapeutic RNA drug for HPV, NWRD09, obtained IND approval in 2025.

The STARi platform employs a targeted enhancement strategy that efficiently induces memory T cell generation by fusing immune adjuvants with antigens, offering both viral clearance and long-term immunoprotection. Related research findings have been published in the prestigious international journal *Molecular Cancer*, demonstrating a 92% complete clearance rate of HPV16-associated tumors in preclinical models. Leveraging this platform, NEWISH has established significant technical barriers in the field of HPV therapeutics. NWRD08 is the first domestically developed nucleic acid drug in China to enter Phase II clinical trials for high-grade cervical lesions associated with HPV16/18 positivity; it precisely eliminates viruses and lesioned cells while preserving cervical physiological structure. Another product, NWRD09, is the first mRNA-based HPV therapeutic from China to file for clinical trials in both China and the United States. Its Phase I clinical data demonstrated a favorable safety profile, with over 80% of subjects achieving lesion regression and viral clearance.

Led by Academician Jiang Jiandong, the company’s R&D team is guided by former clinical review experts from the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) of the National Medical Products Administration. The team comprises more than ten postdoctoral and doctoral talents from prestigious institutions such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with seasoned professionals in industrialization. To date, the company has secured over 40 invention patents in fields including cell and gene therapy and tumor vaccines, published multiple SCI-indexed papers, and received significant special funding support from the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

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