Baidu Co-Founder Robin Li's AI Biotech Firm BioMap Announces Multi-Tens-of-Millions USD NewCo Collaboration with Biogend Therapeutics

Distinguishing itself from the traditional NewCo model, which centers on licensing a single pipeline asset, this collaboration focuses on BioMap exporting a comprehensive AI discovery system to Biogend.

Built on the foundation of xTrimo, a 268-billion-parameter foundational large model for life sciences, and the BioMap OS dry-wet closed-loop discovery system.

Biogend, incubated and led by Legend Capital with follow-on investment from the Temasek Life Sciences Accelerator, is positioned as a pipeline-driven AI-based antibody drug discovery company.

The value of this system lies in:BioMap is not acquiring a single molecule, but rather gaining the capability to “continuously generate molecules.”

The collaboration between the two parties will be initiated at the platform level, with the goal of continuously and batch-developing innovative bispecific antibody pipelines in the field of autoimmune-related therapies.

The first fruits of the collaboration have begun to emerge.

Biogend, leveraging BioMap’s AI discovery system, has developed the world’s first Treg-biased IL-2 bispecific antibody for autoimmune diseases.

IL-2 is one of the most classic cytokines in immunology, capable of promoting both effector T cell activation and Treg proliferation.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists for their pivotal discoveries surrounding peripheral immune tolerance, further underscoring the core value of Tregs in immune homeostasis.

Traditional IL-2 optimization primarily relies on site-directed mutagenesis and mutant library screening, which typically only achieves an approximately 10-fold increase in the affinity disparity between different receptor subunits.

The BioMap team transformed this complex problem into a computationally definable task, carrying out targeted optimization with the clear objective of “enhancing the binding of one class of receptor subunits while weakening that of another.”

Leveraging an AI-driven discovery system, the team started with tens of thousands of in silico simulated candidate molecules and, through three rounds of dry-wet closed-loop validation, ultimately increased the affinity disparity between different receptor subunits by more than 390-fold.

Preclinical data demonstrate that the lead molecule exhibits superior anti-inflammatory efficacy and safety profiles compared to the control molecule across multiple models.

Autoimmune diseases encompass nearly 100 disease types, and the global pharmaceutical market is projected to reach approximately $176 billion by 2030.

The industry is shifting from broad-spectrum immunosuppression to precise restoration of immune balance, creating highly valuable application scenarios for AI-driven drug discovery.

Liu Wei, CEO of BioMap, stated thatThis collaboration integrates the xTrimo large model and BioMap OS into Biogend’s R&D system, accelerating the continuous accumulation of its pipeline assets and the delivery of their value.

Hu Haoyue, CEO of Biogend, emphasized that the company is positioned as an AI-driven, asset-oriented innovative biotechnology firm, concentrating its resources on disease insights and clinical translation.

Hong Tan, Managing Director at Legend Capital, regards this collaboration as a “comprehensive multi-pipeline partnership at the AI platform level.”

Xie Longmin, CEO of the Temasek Life Sciences Accelerator, stated that the IL-2 project has received preliminary scientific validation.