On April 28, 2021 Shanghai BDgene Technology Co., Ltd. ("BDgene"), a leading global gene therapy development company with original delivery technology, reported the company has successfully completed a round A financing of 60 million yuan (Press release, BDgene Therapeutics, APR 28, 2021, View Source [SID1234641044]). This financing was led by Tsinghua Holdings Capital , Ennovation Ventures, Longmen Capital, ETP Ventures, Innovation Angel Fund and other institutions followed in the investment. Probe Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. The funds will be used for preclinical and clinical development of multiple products, laboratory and team building etc. BDgene had previously received a strategic investment from Serve Accurate Faithful Evaluation in June 2019 , and a pre-A round of investment from Keytone Ventures in March 2020.

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According to the data, BDgene was established in 2018 and is an innovative company focusing on the development of in vivo gene editing and in vitro transgene therapy therapies. Since its establishment, the company has attracted much attention from investment institutions and has received investment from many institutions. Why is it sought after by capital? What is the core technology? What are the competitive advantages of leading products?

Gene therapy has become the third revolutionary therapy, but delivery technology is still the most difficult point

For difficult to treat genetic, infectious, and degenerative diseases, gene therapy has the characteristic of "can be cured once". In recent years, it has become the third revolutionary therapy after chemical drugs and antibody drugs.

From the first appearance of the third-generation gene editing technology CRISPR in 2012, to the first in-vivo clinical trials of CRISPR in March 2020, to October 2020 after CRISPR won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and other major events, the gene editing technology gradually matured , But delivery technology has always been the biggest obstacle in the field of gene editing therapy.

In January 2020, Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna wrote an article in "Nature" magazine that "Delivery remains perhaps the biggest bottleneck to somatic-cell genome editing".

In the past, gene therapy delivery technologies that have been clinically verified by humans in the world mainly include three platforms: Adeno-associated virus, lentivirus vector, and lipid nanoparticles. These platforms have certain drawbacks for gene editing delivery. The ideal gene editing delivery tool needs to have both instantaneous and high-efficiency characteristics to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the treatment.

Create China’s original delivery technology to help gene therapy achieve a leap from "1 to 100"

Dr. Cai Yujia, the founder of BDgene, studied under the professors of Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, the Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee, Professor Thomas Perlmann, and Professor Jacob G. Mikkelsen, Aarhus University, Denmark, and he received a doctorate degree in gene therapy. He has mastered the core technology of gene therapy vectors and has rich experience in the production design and transformation of gene therapy virus vectors. After returning to China, he served as a researcher at the Institute of Systems Biomedicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University. In recent years, BDgene has successfully developed VLP-mRNA, a gene therapy delivery platform that has been clinically validated by humans, to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 mRNA to achieve safe and controllable gene editing therapy in vivo.

BDgene successfully completed the world’s second clinical study of in vivo CRISPR gene editing therapy in early November 2020 (in March 2020, Editas’ Zhang Feng team completed the world’s first case), which is also the world’s first CRISPR antiviral therapy Clinical research. This delivery technology delivers Cas9 mRNA through the lentiviral shell, which combines the high efficiency of viral vectors in infecting cells (in vitro infection rate of 99.8%, in vivo infection rate> 50%) and transient mRNA expression (degraded within 72 hours). Therapeutic effects have been achieved on animal models of different diseases, with technical advantages such as transient expression in vivo, no long-term safety risks associated with AAV expression of CRISPR, no obvious off-target, and low immunogenicity. Currently, with the permission of the Ethics Committee of the Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, the team of Professor Hong Jiaxu is presiding over the initial safe and controllable clinical application research based on this technology. In the future, this technology will be extended to the treatment of other viral infections, eye diseases and neurological diseases.

Mr. Zhang Yang, Chairman of Tsinghua Holdings Capital said, "The gene therapy industry has the characteristics of huge market space and extremely high technical threshold. In the past, gene editing technology has gradually broken through, but delivery technology is still the biggest bottleneck. In the past 10 years, Dr. Cai Yujia has been devoted to the development of gene therapy Delivery technology, It has successively successfully developed multiple original delivery technology platforms such as virion delivery CRISPR/Cas9 mRNA technology and next-generation lentivirus delivery technology. BDgene’s original viral keratitis treatment product has perfect preclinical animal experiment data. It is currently conducting non-registered human clinical trials in top domestic eye hospitals. BDgene also deployed gene editing technology to treat hereditary, infectious and degenerative diseases, viral vectors to treat blood diseases, and mRNA vaccines. "

Speaking of this Series A financing being exclusively led by Tsinghua Holdings Capital, Mr. Zhang Yang said, "Thank you very much for the trust of BDgene founder Professor Cai Yujia and old shareholders. In the future, he will support the development of the company in the long-term and jointly promote BDgene’s original delivery technology and The product helps gene therapy to achieve a leap from "1 to 100", so that more patients who are refractory to and incurable can really benefit in the future."