Qihan Biotech Completes $67M Series A++ Financing

(VCBeat) Mar. 29, 2021 -- Hangzhou Qihan Biotech Co., Ltd. ("Qihan Biotech") completed a Series A++ financing of US $67 million from its existing and new investors. The new investors include Lilly Asia Ventures and Matrix Partners China that join the existing group of Sequoia Capital China and CMB International. Proceeds from the transaction will be used to advance Qihan Biotech's IND and production in the field of cell therapy and its hypoimmunity projects.

Up to now, Qihan Biotech's total Series A financing raised has exceeded $100 million. 

Using the rich experience of the research team in xenotransplantation of animal models, Qihan Biotech is able to quickly identify the genes in human cells that affect immune rejection, and by editing these genes to improve the immune compatibility of cells, to achieve low risk or even no risk of allogeneic cell therapy.

In addition to the innovation in targets, Qihan Biotech has also advanced the editing process by directly editing stem cells, and then inducing the proliferation and differentiation of the edited stem cells to produce a large number of the required immune cells. This not only reduces the production cost but also improves the efficiency of gene editing and solves the off-target problem, thus greatly improving the clinical accessibility of cell therapy products.

Qihan Biotech has already started using this approach in GMP production of clinical-grade stem cells. The company's first cell therapy products for human clinical trials are now in development. Considering the long research period and difficulty of xenotransplantation products, Qihan Biotech may commercialize cell therapy products prior to xenotransplantation.

Lilly Asian Ventures makes venture capital investments in Asia for Eli Lilly and Company, a global innovation-driven pharmaceutical company. The company mainly invests in promising life science companies with strong management teams and innovative technology and/or business models. Its initial focus is primarily on opportunities in China, although it will take the investments in east and south Asia into account.

Matrix Partners China builds long-term relationships with entrepreneurs and helps them build significant industry-leading companies. Since its inception in 1977, Matrix Partners China has made hundreds of investments and played an active role in the development of many successful businesses, 50 of which went on to IPO, and 75 of which have gone on to profitable M&A events. Its past successes include Focus Media, Eachnet, and Baidu, among others. The company invests across multiple sectors and stages.