Westlake Therapeutics Secures ￥100 Million in A New Round of Financing

(VCBeat) July. 15, 2021 -- Westlake Therapeutics (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd. ("Westlake Therapeutics") today obtained 100 million yuan of financing, led by Sequoia Capital China, with participation from existing investors Eight Roads, CD Capital and Huafang Asset. 

This round of financing will mainly be used to further promotion of the clinical trials of several red blood cell therapy products of Westlake Therapeutics, the construction of the Shanghai research and development center, team recruitment, expansion of the company's existing product pipeline and multi-target drug discovery strategic cooperation.

Red blood cell (RBCs) has been used as a carrier for drug delivery for nearly half a century, and RBCs-based drug delivery systems have attracted extensive attention in clinical transformation due to their excellent biocompatibility, cyclic half-life, safety and other advantages. Drug delivery systems based on RBCs have also developed from traditional methods such as encapsulation and surface adsorption to a new generation of technologies such as covalent chemical modifications of enzymes and genetic engineering.

Westlake Therapeutics began its formal operation in June 2020. It is a cellular therapy company based on an independent research and development technology platform. The company has established a platform for Engineering and modification to produce engineered erythrocytes with therapeutic functions derived from human peripheral blood stem cells or adult erythrocytes. Recently, several of their clinical research projects for cancer have been approved by the ethics committee, and the potential for clinical application has been recognized by relevant clinical experts.

Sequoia Capital China, as the "entrepreneur behind entrepreneur", focuses on investment in four directions including technology/media, healthcare, consumer goods/modern services and industrial technology. Over the past 15 years, Sequoia Capital China has invested in nearly 600 enterprises with distinctive technical characteristics, innovative business models, and high growth and development potential.

Since 1969 Eight Roads have been partnering with ambitious technology and healthcare founders from all across the world. Its global ventures platform is one of the largest in the world, with teams investing in Asia, Europe, Israel and the US. With over 25 years of venture capital experience in China and has invested in more than 110 companies in the healthcare sector. In the last 10 years, It has invested nearly $6 billion in startups worldwide.