5Y News | METiS Pharmaceuticals Closes Two Consecutive Rounds Raising $150 Million Total
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METiS Pharmaceuticals, an AI-driven drug and delivery system developer, announced on April 6 that it has completed two consecutive funding rounds totaling $150 million. The rounds were led by PICC Capital and China Life Private Equity Investment Company Limited, with follow-on investments from both new and existing shareholders including HSG, 5Y Capital, CMB International, Lightspeed, and Monolith. China Renaissance served as the exclusive financial advisor. The company will continue advancing its AI drug and delivery system platform while actively expanding partnerships to advance more clinically valuable small-molecule and nucleic acid drug pipelines into clinical trials alongside collaborators.
"The convergence of IT and biotechnology has brought '10x speed' efficiency gains to many application scenarios in the industry, and drug delivery systems are one of them," said Xutian Jing, Managing Director at 5Y Capital. "Over the past two years, METiS has demonstrated strong evolutionary capabilities across both its team and business operations. We've been pleasantly surprised to see the company develop a world-leading AI + drug delivery platform, with delivery test results already reaching industry-best levels and showing tremendous value potential. We believe METiS will continue to iterate industry-leading delivery systems and advance the development of new modalities like mRNA, becoming an innovation leader in this vast blue-ocean market."
Led by Academician Hongmin Chen of the US National Academy of Engineering, Dr. Caida Lai, Dr. Wenshou Wang, and multiple top MIT scientists, METiS has pioneered a new track for artificial intelligence in drug delivery. The company combines its self-developed drug delivery "high-throughput experimental platform" with data-driven "AI algorithms" and mechanism-driven "quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics simulations" to predict the physicochemical and biological properties of small-molecule and nucleic acid drugs in specific microenvironments. Through AI-driven dry-lab and wet-lab iteration, METiS achieves more effective lead optimization, nucleic acid sequence design and optimization, and designs superior formulation or nucleic acid delivery systems. To date, METiS has filed multiple patent applications with significant commercial value and established pipelines across small-molecule and nucleic acid R&D, with its most advanced programs expected to enter pivotal clinical trials in 2023.
Notably, METiS has built proprietary, integrated nucleic acid drug development capabilities spanning mRNA sequence design and LNP delivery system design. Its LNP nucleic acid delivery system achieves expression efficiency more than ten times above industry standard, while enabling multi-organ/tissue targeted delivery to the liver, lung, spleen, and muscle — supporting therapies including local regeneration, systemic/targeted protein secretion, antibodies, enzyme replacement, tumor targeting, and immune enhancement. This has secured multiple co-development partnership opportunities with major domestic and international pharmaceutical companies.
Dr. Caida Lai, CEO of METiS Pharmaceuticals, stated: "We are deeply grateful to our new and existing shareholders for their boundless support in corporate operations, technology, and business partnerships, which has enabled us to rapidly build our 'AI drug and delivery system development platform' and establish multiple small-molecule and drug pipelines. We are also honored to have established collaborative relationships with leading pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions at home and abroad, working together to apply excellent technologies to small-molecule and nucleic acid drug development, advance more promising medicines into clinical trials, and ultimately benefit patients."
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