5Y News | Aikai Biotech Completes Three Funding Rounds in Its First Year
Innovate from the source.
iX Biotech, a Suzhou-based biotech company focused on developing next-generation off-the-shelf cell therapies using iPSC (induced pluripotent stem cell) technology, recently announced it has completed an A+ round of over RMB 200 million.
Fang Qi, vice president at 5Y Capital, said: "We are very optimistic about the enormous potential of iPSC technology in tumor immunotherapy and regenerative medicine. We believe iPSC-derived cells will become critical 'infrastructure' for cell therapy, working alongside tools like gene editing to finally make cell therapy truly universal and engineered. We are honored to have led iX Biotech's A+ round — this is an important strategic placement for 5Y Capital in the iPSC space. The iX Biotech team has deep expertise and continuous iterative innovation capabilities in foundational technologies like iPSC reprogramming and cell fate-based transdifferentiation. At the same time, the execution and product advancement the company has demonstrated in just one year since founding are truly impressive. We very much look forward to iX Biotech leveraging its platform of truly original innovation to achieve product commercialization as soon as possible, developing cell therapies with real differentiation and global competitiveness."
Thanks to its forward-looking innovation and strong R&D capabilities, iX Biotech has attracted significant market attention and recognition since its founding in March 2021. The company has secured investments from Westlake Innovation Investment, Lianxin Capital, 5Y Capital, Kai-Feng Ventures, Huaxin Investment, Delian Capital, and other funds. It closed its seed round just one month after founding, and completed a nearly RMB 100 million Series A round five months later. In less than a year, iX Biotech has successfully completed three financing rounds totaling over RMB 300 million, demonstrating the company's determination and capability to address unmet clinical needs.
Cell therapy has been a hot research area domestically and internationally in recent years, widely pursued by companies and capital. In early 2019, the US FDA announced its future cell therapy development plan, predicting that nearly 20 new cell therapy drugs would be approved by 2025. A report by global market intelligence firm Fiormarkets showed that the global cell therapy technology market was approximately $11.2 billion in 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 16.81% from 2018 to 2025, and is expected to exceed $34 billion by 2025.
However, traditional primary cell therapy requires customized production for each patient, with long manufacturing cycles, high production costs, significant individual and batch-to-batch variation, and severely limited drug accessibility — issues that have long constrained the development of cell therapy. Encouragingly, the Nobel Prize-winning technology of 2012 — iPSCs generated through somatic cell reprogramming — promises to completely solve these problems. Scaling production of off-the-shelf universal target cells to benefit a broad patient population is precisely the direction iX Biotech has been pursuing through its innovative R&D in cell therapy.
Cell therapies based on iPSC development have shown tremendous potential in clinical treatment across various diseases. In recent years, companies such as Fate Therapeutics and Century have presented data at international conferences demonstrating that iPSC-based "off-the-shelf" cell therapies for tumors exhibit excellent safety profiles and promising mid- to long-term efficacy data.
Facing the opportunities and challenges of next-generation cell therapy technology, iX Biotech has chosen to confront difficulties head-on and pursue original innovation. Under the leadership of its two founders — Chairman Xiaodong Liu, PhD, and CEO Zhiyong He, PhD — iX Biotech adheres to the mission of "clinical needs-oriented, patient-centered drug development." The company has built deep technical expertise in iPSC reprogramming, gene editing, and stem cell differentiation, and has achieved a series of original breakthroughs in the iPSC field. These capabilities provide a solid foundation for iX Biotech to pursue true independent innovation from the source.
In 2021, Nature published as its cover article the research成果 of iX Biotech founder Xiaodong Liu, PhD — the world's first successful in vitro construction of human blastocyst-like structures using somatic cells as starting material (Nature. 2021 Mar; 591(7851): 627-632. Cover article). This achievement was also selected for Science magazine's list of top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2021.
Building on these technological innovations, iX Biotech has actively advanced industrialization. In less than a year since founding, the company has established proprietary iPSC reprogramming platforms, multiple functional cell differentiation platforms, and a clinical-grade iPSC cell bank. Related成果 on safer, more stable iPSC candidate products suitable for intelligent editing were also published in Nature in 2020 (Nature. 2020 Oct; 586 (7827): 101-107.).
An excellent founding team is the source and guarantee of corporate innovation. Behind the company's rapid growth, iX Biotech has assembled a professional team spanning scientific research, clinical development, industrial operations, and business management.
Beyond this, iX Biotech has demonstrated remarkable speed in industrial layout and strategic partnerships. In June 2021, iX Biotech entered a global strategic partnership with Biotheus to combine Biotheus's proprietary CAB-structured cell therapy platform and jointly develop multiple iPSC-CAB-NK cell therapy products targeting solid tumors. In October of the same year, iX Biotech broke ground on a 2,500-square-meter GMP pilot plant in Suzhou to accelerate pipeline development and commercialization.
iX Biotech has already demonstrated a milestone-advancing trajectory. As Xiaodong Liu, PhD, once noted, iPSC-derived off-the-shelf cell therapy is poised to become the ultimate solution for cell therapy. Drawing on its R&D team's accumulated experience in iPSC research and industry, iX Biotech believes that in the near future, it will bring safe, rapid, effective, and affordable cell therapy solutions to countless patients.
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