5Y News | Galixir Completes New Strategic Funding Round, Continues Advancing Drug R&D Pipeline

On August 4, 2021, Galixir announced the completion of a new funding round. The round was led by the Shanghai AI Industry Investment Fund, with continued support from all existing shareholders including Gaorong Capital, Source Code Capital, Redpoint China Ventures, DCM, 5Y Capital, and BAI Capital. Mingyue Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for this round.

Xutian Jing, Managing Director at 5Y Capital, commented: "Congratulations to Galixir on completing this new funding round. In just over a year since our investment, the founding team has demonstrated top-tier learning and evolutionary capabilities, making solid commercial progress alongside technical validation. At a time when interdisciplinary fields are rapidly converging, 5Y Capital continues to pay close attention to opportunities where information technology can be applied in healthcare and pharmaceuticals."

Galixir has built its drug discovery platform, PyxirTM, based on proprietary algorithms combined with domain knowledge, tools, and expertise in medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry, and biology. The platform has been validated and achieved阶段性技术进展. This funding round plays an important role in further strengthening the platform's capabilities. The proceeds will be used to advance multiple drug R&D pipeline projects, expand the talent pool, and deepen scientific and technological advantages. Galixir will work with its investors to explore the frontiers of new drug discovery and build a global enterprise at the intersection of biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

Every new drug that reaches the market represents more than a decade of arduous R&D and billions of dollars in spending. In reality, over 90% of new drugs never make it to the finish line. Long cycles, high costs, and low success rates are universal challenges in the pharmaceutical R&D industry. For decades, many innovators have explored new drug discovery technologies. The advantages of AI — automation, scalability, and interpretability — have made it an extremely promising new approach to drug design.

Founded in 2019, Galixir is a company that leverages world-leading AI technology to empower drug R&D. By applying cutting-edge AI algorithms combined with tools and expertise in computational chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and biology, Galixir has built a comprehensive series of preclinical drug discovery models spanning from target identification to candidate compound generation and screening, compound structure optimization, druggability and toxicity prediction, and patent analysis. This has compressed the preclinical drug discovery phase from 4-7 years using traditional methods to 12 months or even less.

In an autoimmune target agonist design project where traditional computational chemistry methods alone struggled to deliver satisfactory results, Galixir applied its self-developed PyxirTM platform to conduct de novo design. Through careful screening by AI, computational chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and biology teams — combined with synthesizability screening — the company identified three highly active compounds with novel scaffolds designed by AI within just one month. Upon synthesis and testing, all three molecules demonstrated high activity (EC50 below 100 nM), with one candidate showing EC50 below 10 nM and ~100-fold selectivity. After multiple rounds of in vitro validation, this candidate exhibited favorable metabolic stability, permeability, safety, and efficacy profiles, with no inhibition of CYP or hERG, and observable pharmacological effects at low oral doses. The project is currently undergoing in vivo toxicology evaluation.

Generally speaking, compared to inhibitors, agonists face higher requirements for receptor binding — the molecule must be more specific to produce pharmacological effects. This makes such drugs inherently more difficult to design, requiring careful coordination and balancing of multiple parameters within optimal ranges to achieve ideal receptor activation. The fact that all three candidate molecules selected by Galixir from millions of AI-designed virtual molecules demonstrated high activity in preclinical validation is significant. More importantly, the timeline from target selection to molecular design to candidate identification took only one month — something traditional computational chemistry methods simply cannot match. This exciting result also proves that Galixir's PyxirTM platform can balance competing objectives, efficiently and accurately identifying target molecules with high selectivity and specificity.

Of course, from preliminary preclinical validation to entering clinical stages, AI-designed drugs still require further iteration and optimization. However, the ability to dramatically shorten early drug discovery timelines and substantially improve hit rates for effective molecules already represents a leap forward for the field.

Galixir's work in AI-empowered drug R&D has opened a new path for drug discovery, earning broad recognition from both industry and academia. The company has established partnerships with multiple multinational pharmaceutical companies, listed drugmakers, biotech firms, and research institutions both domestically and internationally, continuously exploring the frontiers of drug R&D.

Regarding this funding round, Dr. Chengtai Li, Founder and CEO of Galixir, stated: "Galixir's vision is to 'free patients from suffering and make new drugs accessible.' We are delighted to have the continued support of our investors in the innovative arena of AI-driven drug discovery. Drug discovery is a lengthy process, but it is also one that creates value, drives innovation, and benefits patients worldwide. Through the integration of AI, computational chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and biology, Galixir has found a new path for drug discovery — enabling faster identification of shining stars in the vast compound universe that can cure human diseases, while improving R&D efficiency and success rates through data, algorithms, and computing power, ultimately reducing drug development costs. Galixir has completed platform development and construction, and continues to explore broader applications of AI technology in biopharma. We are currently advancing more than ten innovative drug R&D pipelines through self-developed or partnered programs, continuously achieving positive results in in vitro and in vivo experiments. Going forward, Galixir will keep pushing technological boundaries to become a global enterprise leading the convergence of biotechnology and artificial intelligence."

5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Venture Capital) currently manages approximately $5 billion across USD and RMB dual-currency funds. We believe the world will be a better place when the crazy ideas others see in you start to be believed.

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