VMS leads $190m round for China CDMO player Chime

The round – which follows a $125 million Series A in early 2020 – also featured Fidelity International and Panacea Venture. James Huang, the founder of Panacea and executive chairman of Chime, has a long history with the asset.

Chime was established in 2016 as a unit of JHL Biotech before formally separating last year. Huang, then working for KPBC, seeded JHL in 2012 and the company went on to raise further funding and list in Taipei. It delisted in 2018 with a view to pursuing a Hong Kong IPO. JHL, which provides CDMO services and makes its own drugs, was renamed Eden Biologics this year. Huang is currently CEO.

Chime operates the world’s first KuBio modular bio-manufacturing facility in Wuhan. Developed by General Electric, KuBio is a turnkey approach to bio-manufacturing. It relies on prefabricated buildings and single-use technologies to get facilities in operation within condensed timeframes. Chime’s base in Wuhan was completed in 18 months. Similar traditional facilitates take three years.

The company provides one-stop integrated solutions to support the biopharmaceutical industry from early drug development to late-stage clinical and commercial production. Its services are said to be cost-effective yet compliant with most recognized global quality standards.

Not long after the Series A round, Chime signed a contract with the Wuhan municipal government to build a large-scale CDMO facility with an annual output capacity of more than 140,000 liters. It will cost $900 million and occupy 18 hectares. This was followed by an agreement with Akso Biopharmaceutical to deliver fully integrated CDMO services and commercialized production.

“The successful completion of this financing round will further accelerate the capacity expansion process of Chime Biologics,” Huang said in a statement. “With the rapid growth of China’s biologics market and the surging demand for CDMO service, Chime Biologics will further leverage on its world-class quality system and commercial-scale manufacturing capabilities to continue providing our customers worldwide with first-class CDMO services.”

Panacea closed its debut fund in 2019 with $180 million in commitments. The firm focuses on investing in and incubating early-stage life sciences businesses with disruptive technologies. Investment professionals often serve on the founding teams of portfolio companies.

Chime is the third Chinese CDMO player to receive VC funding in the past three weeks, AVCJ Research’s records show. A RMB400 million ($61 million) Series C for Thousand Oaks Biopharmaceuticals was followed by a $70 million Series B for Zhenge Biotech, which specializes in large-molecule drugs.

WuXi AppTec is the runaway leader in China’s pharmaceutical R&D outsourcing space, but service offerings vary across the industry. An increasing number of players have sought to become more integrated, combining contract research organization (CRO) and CDMO functions.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Healthcare
• Early-stage
• China
• Pharmaceuticals
• Panacea
• Fidelity
• VMS Group