SanegeneBio, a Chinese clinical-stage biotech company backed by internet major Tencent, has closed a Series B financing round of over $110 million, according to an announcement.
The round was led by an industrial investor that the company did not name, and included participation from Sino Biopharm, Legend Capital, Vivo Capital, Invus, SymBiosis, Guofa Capital, TruMed, and Lake Bleu Capital.
It added that Eli Lilly made a strategic investment, while existing shareholders, including Qiming Venture Partners, K2 Venture Partners, TF Capital, Oriza Holdings, and Northern Light Venture Capital, also joined.
The final close of its Series B round comes about two years after SanegeneBio secured $80 million in an extended Series A funding round co-anchored by Tencent and local healthcare-focused investment firm YuanBio Venture Capital.
Founded in 2021, SanegeneBio operates R&D sites in Boston, Shanghai, and Suzhou and is building a pipeline of RNAi candidates designed to silence disease-related genes in both the liver and tissues outside the liver, using its LEAD (Ligand and Enhancer Assisted Delivery) platform, the company said.
RNAi has emerged as a growing drug modality over the past decade, with companies racing to expand delivery beyond the liver and develop longer-acting medicines that can be dosed less frequently.
SanegeneBio said it will use the proceeds to move its clinical-stage assets toward registrational studies and to broaden development across several therapeutic areas, including autoimmune, cardiovascular, and metabolic diseases, as well as obesity.
“Moving forward, we plan to advance our investigational medicines to late-stage development globally, and bring more transformative programs into the clinic leveraging our LEAD TM platform,” said Dr Weimin Wang, founder and CEO of SanegeneBio.
SanegeneBio said it has initiated clinical trials for four experimental medicines to date.
The company’s Series B funding comes as, despite a dip in deal count from the previous month, financing into Greater China-based startups continued on an upward curve in October.
The month saw the completion of 202 startup investments, down 9% from the previous month’s tally of 222. They cumulatively raised almost $4.5 billion, up 25% from September’s $3.6 billion, according to proprietary data compiled by DealStreetAsia.
