BlueRun Ventures Leads Nearly $6 Million Pre-A Round for Biotech Firm LeadXPro | BlueRun Ventures BlueRun Ventures led the Pre-A round for LeadXPro, a biotechnology company, raising nearly $6 million.

Ningbo LeadXpro Biotechnology, a company dedicated to automating chemoproteomics workflows to accelerate drug discovery, recently announced the completion of a nearly $6 million Pre-A funding round led by BlueRun Ventures, with Yongchao Venture Capital as a co-investor. The new capital will be used to advance the development of LeadXpro's automated chemoproteomics platform and the creation of the world's largest live human cell-level target-probe interaction database.

BlueRun Ventures stated: In recent years, popular drug target tracks have become crowded with particularly fierce competition. However, more than 90% of human protein targets remain undrugged, and developing high-quality drugs for "undruggable" targets has become a key battleground for pharmaceutical companies. Chemoproteomics can use disease-relevant cell models or tissues as experimental systems to screen drug candidates against protein targets under live cell conditions. We look forward to LeadXpro leveraging its next-generation, highly automated chemoproteomics platform to find drugs for highly validated, challenging targets, while continuously generating high-value live-cell small molecule-protein interaction data to provide core support for critical drug R&D steps.

"LeadXpro was incubated by the Ningbo University New Drug Technology Research Institute and has grown over four years into a tier-A team of over 60 people spanning chemistry, biology, and automation. We have established a proprietary photoaffinity labeling chemoproteomics (PAL-AfBPP) platform, which has already conducted multiple collaborations with several academic institutions and drug R&D companies, achieving staged successes," said Dr. Feng Ni, co-founder and CEO of LeadXpro. "We are pleased to use this funding to accelerate our technological innovation and external business partnerships."

Chemoproteomics technology has attracted widespread attention for its ability to reveal the mechanisms of action of phenotypically active molecules in live human cells, explore drug-protein interaction networks, and develop drugs for undruggable and difficult-to-drug targets — as evidenced by Roche's recent $2 billion partnership with Jnana and Bayer's $2 billion acquisition of Vividion in 2021.

LeadXpro is a pioneer in accelerating chemoproteomics through automation, currently building the world's largest human protein-probe interaction database, aiming to cover more than 15,000 proteins across the entire human proteome. For proteins with unknown probes or hit compounds, LeadXpro is developing high-throughput drug screening methods based on live cell-level targets. LeadXpro also recently signed a strategic cooperation agreement with AstraZeneca's iCampus to establish a preclinical translational platform for modernizing traditional Chinese medicine in Chengdu, China.

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Originating in Silicon Valley, BlueRun Ventures was established in 2005 as a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups.

Currently, BlueRun Ventures manages multiple USD and RMB dual-currency funds in China, with assets under management exceeding RMB 15 billion, making it one of the largest early-stage funds in the country. Its investment stage focuses on Pre-A and Series A rounds, covering hard tech and innovative interaction, enterprise technology, new consumption, and healthcare. It has cumulatively invested in over 150 startups, including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi.com, Qudian, Songguo Mobility, Ganji.com, Energy Monster, Yuntu Semiconductor, Machenike, Yunsheng Intelligence, Anxin Network Shield, and BioMap.

BlueRun Ventures has been ranked first in Zero2IPO's "China's Top 30 Early-Stage Investment Institutions" and ChinaVenture's "China's Best Early-Stage Venture Capital Institutions TOP30," and was named among Preqin's Top 10 global VC fund managers for consistent high-return performance.

Additionally, BlueRun Ventures has received consecutive annual recognitions from Forbes China, 36Kr, Cyzone, Caixin Media, CBNweekly, Jiemian, and other media organizations as "China's Best Early-Stage Institution of the Year," "China's Top Venture Capital Institution," "Most Entrepreneur-Friendly Early-Stage Institution of the Year," and "Most Influential Early-Stage Institution of the Year."