Incubated by XtalPi, METiS is the world’s first enterprise to promote pharmaceutical preparation optimization with AI in the world
AI drugs and delivery system developer METiS (Chinese:剂泰医药) received USD 150 million in two rounds of financing recently, led by PICC Capital and China Life Private Equity Investment, with participation from Sequoia China, 5Y Capital, CMB International, Lightspeed China Partners, Monolith, Frees Fund and other investors.
Founded in 2019 and incubated by XtalPi (Chinese: 晶泰科技), a tech-driven drugmaker, METiS is committed to the development of AI drug and delivery system platforms.
It has joined hands with partners to advance more high-value drug pipelines to the clinical stage in the field of small molecule and nucleic acid drugs. METiS’s founding team includes US Academician of Engineering Chen Hongmin, Dr. Lai Caida, Dr. Wang Wenshou, and many top MIT scientists.
METiS uses the self-developed high-throughput experimental platform for drug delivery combined with data-driven AI algorithms, mechanism-driven quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics simulations to predict the physicochemical and biological properties of small molecules and nucleic acid drugs in specific microenvironments.
The company has achieved more effective lead optimization, nucleic acid sequence design and optimization, while designing more advantageous formulations or nucleic acid delivery systems through AI-driven dry and wet experimental iterations.
At present, METiS has applied for a number of patents with important application value, and has developed many small molecule and nucleic acid pipelines. The pipeline with faster progress will enter a pivotal clinical trial in 2023.
METiS has built a nucleic acid drug development capability integrating mRNA sequence design and LNP delivery system design. The expression efficiency of its LNP nucleic acid delivery system exceeds the industry standard by more than 10 times. It is also capable of multiple organ/tissue target delivery to help with partial regeneration, systemic/targeted protein secretion, and other treatments.
METiS has promoted a number of first-in-class and best-in-class drug pipelines, and has also cooperated with large pharmaceutical companies and academia. We hope that it can develop more innovative drugs as soon as possible to benefit human health," said Shu Wanting, Head of the Investment Department and Managing Director of PICC Capital.