Shanghai State Investment Pilot and Dalton Lead NewPro’s Pre-A Round of Tens of Millions of Yuan

VCBeat has learned that NewPro Bioworks recently announced the completion of its Pre-A financing round, raising tens of millions of yuan. The round was co-led by Shanghai State-Owned Capital Venture Guidance Fund and Aocreate Guidance Fund, with Mingde Capital serving as the exclusive financial advisor. Notably, the Aocreate Guidance Fund was jointly established by Dalton Investment and the listed industry player OPM Biosciences, marking it as the first biological manufacturing corporate venture capital (CVC) fund in the Yangtze River Delta region. Meanwhile, the company’s independently developed precision fermentation-derived lactoferrin product has officially received U.S. FDA Self-GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) certification, signifying a key breakthrough in international market access for its core product.

This financing round represents a significant step for Shanghai State-owned Capital Investment Pioneer in practicing the concept of "patient capital" and deepening its strategic layout in synthetic biology-based food creation and high-end biomanufacturing. It is also a key investment project for the Aochuang Pioneer Fund, focusing on innovation in synthetic biology foods. The fund aims to aggregate industrial innovation resources, drive breakthroughs in key biomanufacturing technologies, and support the growth of innovative enterprises. This round of investment fully demonstrates the capital market’s strong recognition of the innovative applications of synthetic biology in the food sector, reflecting firm confidence in NewPro Bioworks’ technological barriers, product commercialization capabilities, and long-term growth potential.

The funds raised in this round will be primarily allocated to three key areas: first, accelerating the regulatory approval process for lactoferrin, the core product, as a novel food ingredient in China; second, deepening expansion into overseas markets and driving the commercialization of products that have already obtained FDA Self-GRAS certification in international markets; and third, advancing the construction of large-scale production capacity for functional food proteins.

(Image provided by the company)

NewPro Bioworks is a biomanufacturing company deeply engaged in synthetic biology technology. Leveraging its advanced industrial chassis engineering platform, FlexBase™, and its intelligent precision fermentation process, NeuroBrew™, the company focuses on the biomanufacturing of rare functional proteins found in nature.

Leveraging its proprietary FlexBase™ industrial chassis engineering technology platform, the company has achieved plug-and-play standardization of biological elements for industrial microbial chassis, high-throughput screening integrating dry-lab and wet-lab approaches, and targeted remodeling of cellular compartmentalization functions. For instance, in the expression and secretion of its core product, lactoferrin, FlexBase™ addresses the challenges associated with complex protein modifications, particularly by deeply mimicking glycosylation patterns, thereby ensuring that recombinant proteins produced via precision fermentation are highly consistent with their natural counterparts. Supported by NeuroBrew™, an intelligent precision fermentation process, NewPro Bioworks has accumulated fermentation data from thousands of batches at the pilot scale to develop AI-specific data models. This has further enabled intelligent fermentation control and process optimization based on specialized models at both pilot and production scales. Such technological capabilities ensure the efficient, stable, and cost-effective production of functional ingredients such as lactoferrin.

Meanwhile, building on the solid commercialization of lactoferrin, the company continues to expand its pipeline of high-value functional food proteins, including osteopontin and ovalbumin. Committed to leveraging advanced biomanufacturing technologies, it aims to deliver safe, premium, and sustainable innovative food ingredient solutions, thereby promoting the industrial adoption of synthetic biology in consumer-facing sectors.