AI-powered pharmaceutical formulation development company "METiS" announced the completion of a multi-million dollar angel round — Source Code Capital participated as a follow-on investor.

源码资本·March 23, 2020·1·5

The world's first startup to use AI to drive pharmaceutical formulation development, dedicated to providing drug companies with rapid, precise intelligent formulation R&D through high-throughput formulation platforms and AI computing technologies.

Today, METiS Pharmaceuticals (杭州剂泰医药科技有限公司, hereinafter "METiS") officially announced the completion of its angel round of several million dollars in funding. This round was led by FreeS Fund, with Source Code Capital and XtalPi participating as strategic investors. China Renaissance Alpha served as the exclusive financial advisor. The financing is significant: following the round, the company will simultaneously build out AI formulation optimization platforms in both China and the United States, while advancing formulation-based new drug pipelines and preclinical formulation development with domestic and international pharmaceutical partners.

METiS is the world's first startup to use artificial intelligence to drive pharmaceutical formulation development. It is dedicated to providing pharmaceutical companies with rapid, precise, and intelligent formulation R&D through high-throughput formulation platforms and AI computing technologies, while also developing new formulation-based drugs in areas such as cancer and infectious diseases to bring high-quality, effective medicines to patients.

Image source: METiS

AI-driven innovative drug development has been a hot trend in recent years. Using AI technology to accelerate target design, drug molecule design, and polymorph optimization in the new drug R&D process can significantly shorten development timelines and improve pharmaceutical economics value. METiS's current business focuses on two areas: (1) assisting pharmaceutical companies with preclinical formulation optimization, and (2) developing low-risk, low-cost, short-development-cycle formulation new drugs that still deliver high pharmaceutical value. Leveraging its self-developed big data computing/experimental platform for pharmaceuticals and the founding team's deep accumulated experience in drug manufacturing, METiS can effectively use artificial intelligence to integrate formulation experiments and computing platforms to drive global optimization of pharmaceutical formulations, enhance new drug development efficiency, and build a clinically differentiated pipeline of formulation-based new drugs.

METiS's core team was founded by a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and several MIT serial entrepreneurs, and was incubated through XtalPi, formally establishing in Boston in August 2019. Cofounder and CEO Caida Lai, PhD, is an expert in pharmaceutical manufacturing processes and digital strategy for new drugs, formerly a polymorph and process researcher at the Novartis-MIT Center and a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Cofounder and Chief R&D Officer Hongming Chen is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a veteran serial entrepreneur in pharmaceuticals, and an expert in drug formulation research, who previously led one pharmaceutical startup to a successful IPO and another to a high-value acquisition by Johnson & Johnson. Cofounder and Chief Operating Officer Wenshou Wang is an expert in small-molecule synthesis with years of deep research in artificial intelligence, and was formerly cofounder of Inkbit. In addition, METiS's core team includes multiple senior practitioners in pharmaceutical manufacturing, new drug digitalization, and related fields.

METiS Cofounder & CEO Caida Lai

Dr. Caida Lai, Cofounder and CEO of METiS, stated: "The digitalization and intelligentization of the pharmaceutical industry chain has been a key development direction for major pharmaceutical companies in recent years. METiS expects to occupy a critical position in this value chain, using our AI platform to accelerate formulation development efficiency, and through drug delivery to address pain points in medication use, bringing high-quality, effective new drugs to patients. We are very pleased to receive support from top investors in AI and pharmaceuticals such as FreeS Fund, Source Code Capital, and XtalPi — this is tremendous validation for us, and we look forward to continuously innovating and creating value together in the AI pharmaceutical field."

Feng Li, Founding Partner of FreeS Fund, said: "Since our 2016 investment in XtalPi, computation/AI-driven biotechnology has been a key investment theme for us, including the currently very hot AI pharmaceutical space. The METiS team has a world-class background at the intersection of computation, chemical engineering, materials, and pharmaceutical science, and masters advanced formulation design technologies including nano-formulations, microspheres, and oral controlled-release formulations. What is even rarer is that the team has practical experience advancing multiple product pipelines to Phase III clinical trials and market launch. METiS's proprietary high-throughput platform for formulation screening and optimization will provide data for AI-driven new drug development in the future. As innovative therapies such as gene therapy place increasingly higher demands on drug administration and delivery, combining computation with formulation design, FreeS Fund is very optimistic about METiS's extremely broad prospects in both providing technical services and developing innovative drugs."

Yungang Huang of Source Code Capital stated: "Source Code Capital attaches great importance to AI applications in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, and continues to pay attention to innovation and transformation. The COVID-19 pandemic has further raised society's expectations for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, increasing demand for new technologies and methods, such as how to better conduct drug R&D. METiS has found a unique value creation point in the AI-assisted pharmaceutical field. We very much look forward to the team bringing their rich experience to domestic pharmaceutical innovation, helping the industry and patients by improving drug R&D efficiency and quality. We have high expectations for this."

Shuhao Wen, Chairman of XtalPi, said: "XtalPi believes METiS can become the most competitive team globally in this field. As an MIT serial entrepreneurship team, they share very strong common values of engineering and science-driven innovation. Additionally, the team's capabilities are complementary, from company operations to pharmaceutical industry experience, particularly Academician Chen's decades of formulation experience, which enables the team to deeply understand how to digitize the formulation process in order to find the best AI application scenarios, and even to look at problems from the perspective of atoms and electrons. XtalPi also looks forward to leveraging its advantages in physics and AI algorithms through cooperation. We look forward to the METiS collaboration platform maturing and being applied in small-molecule and large-molecule drug fields, particularly where the large-molecule market is even more prominent — we can see that METiS has almost unlimited potential."

Xiang Zhou, Managing Director of China Renaissance, said: "We are very pleased to have helped METiS successfully complete its angel round financing. AI pharmaceuticals has been a hot investment track in recent years. Given the real challenges of long development cycles and high costs in traditional drug R&D, AI-assisted drug development can effectively shorten research timelines and improve pharmaceutical economics value. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that in the AI pharmaceutical field, which has such high requirements for interdisciplinary talent, the METiS team has a top-tier configuration, with deep professional accumulation and rich industry experience in both formulation optimization and artificial intelligence. We fully believe that by using AI to drive formulation optimization, a critical node in the process, and continuing to work diligently in depth, METiS will break through more critical links in drug R&D and revolutionize traditional R&D models."