Qiming, Quan lead $120m Series B for China's OriCell

Shanghai STVC Group, Jianyi Capital (formerly Sinopharm Capital), a fund-of-funds linked to the Suzhou city government, and Boquan Equity Investment Management also took part, alongside unnamed foreign investment funds. There was a re-up by existing investors C&D Emerging Capital.

OriCell previously received CNY 80m (USD 11.3m) from Qiming in 2019 and then a CNY 200m Series A led by Shanghai Pudong Innotec Capital in early 2021, AVCJ Research’s records show. Additional commitments came from Shanghai Zhangjiang Science & Technology Investment, Yijing Capital, and Osen Assets, as well as from Qiming and C&D.

Founded in 2015, OriCell’s model is based on four platforms focusing on antibody discovery, cell culture, and CAR T technology. The goal is to remove the efficacy and cost bottlenecks in CAR T-cell therapy, which involves extracting immune cells from a patient, modifying them, and then returning them to the host to attack tumours.

The company has 20 pipeline treatments, including CAR T, universal CAR T, and antibody-based products. It holds global intellectual property rights for each one. GPC3, its first internally developed CAR T product, which targets advanced liver cancer, was recently awarded investigational new drug (IND) status by China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA).

OriCell is also working on OriCAR-017, China’s first CAR T therapy for relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma (RRMM), which it claims performed well in investigator-initiated trials. The treatment will be registered for clinical development in China and the US.

The antibody drug pipeline is all pre-IND stage apart from ATG101, which has been developed in partnership with Hong Kong-listed biotech player Antengene since 2019. It has received implied approval in China, having already been granted IND status in the US, and clinical trials are set to be conducted in Australia.

The new capital will be used to support drug development programmes and technology platforms, and to construct a manufacturing plant.

“We have achieved a number of significant milestones in terms of clinical development of our CAR T and partnered bispecific antibody programs, as well as continued to strengthen our senior management team. We look forward to delivering more innovative discoveries and clinical milestones in the next three years,” Helen Yang, chairman and CEO of OriCell, said in a statement.

Qiming recently closed its eighth US dollar-denominated fund at the hard cap of USD 2.5bn. The corpus has been split in two: a core fund to be deployed in early and growth-stage healthcare and technology and consumer opportunities; and a parallel healthcare-only vehicle. This effectively allows LPs to double down on healthcare.

Quan Capital was established by Samantha Du, founder of US-listed Chinese drug developer Zai Lab. The firm closed its second fund in 2019 with USD 275m in commitments. Qiming was an early investor in Zai Lab.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Healthcare
• Early-stage
• China
• Pharmaceuticals
• Qiming Venture Partners
• Quan Capital