Sequoia China, HighLight back biotech player Cullgen

The biotech company was founded last year by Ying Luo, who trained and worked in the US before returning to China and establishing Shanghai Genomics in 2001. The company was subsequently acquired by Japan and US-based GNI Group. Cullgen received seed funding from GNI and has a similar geographical footprint, with locations in the US, China, and Japan.

Most drugs function by blocking the activities of proteins within cells, but many of these proteins are beyond the reach of conventional pharmacological methods. Cullgen targets Ubiquitin, a small protein present in all organisms that plays a key role in degradation, a process used to regulate protein quantity and activity in a cell. By taking control of Ubiquitin, any protein can be selected for destruction.

This approach is said to be significantly more cost-effective than traditional drug discovery. Cullgen, which has a staff of 40, is building an internal pipeline of protein degraders that will initially focus on oncology and immune diseases. The new capital will go towards the development of this pipeline.

“Since our founding in early 2018 we have made significant advancement of our targeted protein degradation platform which has directly led to the identification of several pre-clinical assets that we are rapidly advancing towards the clinic,” Luo said in a statement.

Sequoia, which raised $2.5 billion for its latest China growth, venture and seed strategies last year, counts healthcare as a core sector, alongside technology, media and telecom, consumer, and industrial technology. HighLight is a healthcare specialist with $875 million under management across US dollar and renminbi-denominated funds. Its second US dollar fund closed at $250 million in October 2017.

Earlier this year, the two firms co-led a RMB550 million ($80 million) pre-IPO funding round for BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology, a Chinese developer of innovative and generic drugs.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Healthcare
• North America
• China
• USA
• Japan
• Sequoia Capital
• HighLight Capital