Asia VCs invest $10m in US-Singapore biotech player
A group of VCs led by China’s 6 Dimensions Capital and Sino-US investor Danhua Capital (DHVC) has committed $10 million to US and Singapore-based Engine Biosciences.
Additional participants include EDBI, Pavilion Capital, Baidu Ventures, WI Harper, Nest.Bio Ventures, and biopharmaceutical technology provider WuXi AppTec. The oversubscribed round is being called the largest ever seed-stage investment in Southeast Asia.
Engine focuses on advanced biotechnology development, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and a genomics network biomedicine platform to help drug discovery processes. It will use the fresh capital to support a staff expansion across Singapore and San Francisco as well as preclinical studies with an unidentified US Fortune 500 partner.
"The lack of insight into complex and multi-factorial biological processes within cells contributes to the high failure rate across the drug development cycle," Leon Chen, CEO of 6 Dimensions, said in a statement. "Engine Biosciences has pioneered a new approach to address this by generating novel data and insights that are highly relevant to the biological process. We expect that the company's AI platform will lead to insightful information in complex diseases' pathways that was not previously possible using traditional wet lab-centric biology research."
The technology is currently being applied to a number of research areas related to new drug applications and the biological factors around targeted diseases. Engine claims to have achieved proof of concept across a number of disease indications and cell types, with active programs in the fields of cancer, neurodegeneration, autoimmune disorders, and skin.
Healthcare-focused 6 Dimensions Capital was formed last year through the merger of Frontline Bioventures and WuXi Healthcare Ventures. It has $1.6 billion of assets under management through four US dollar-denominated and three renminbi-denominated funds, along with a portfolio of more than 60 companies.
DHVC claims $600 million under management across three funds. Focus sectors include AI, virtual reality, augmented reality, mobile Internet, big data, cloud computing, wearable computing, robotics, and new materials with environmental or IT applications.
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