Founded in 2006, Healthgen Biotech specializes in molecular pharmaceutical research and development. Its rice endosperm cell specific expression platform has a high capacity to express proteins or small peptides in the rice grain, which facilitates the development of plant-made pharmaceuticals (PMP).
Wuhan Healthgen Biotech (Chinese: 武汉禾元生物) recently announced the completion of a CNY 556 million (USD 88 Million) Pre-IPO financing round. This round of funding was led by Betta Pharmaceuticals (Chinese: 贝达药业, SHE:300558), followed by returning investors. The proceeds will be utilized to accelerate the R&D processes of plant-derived new therapeutic pipelines and to construct the production line of recombinant human serum albumin injection.
Healthgen Biotech is a leading enterprise with state-of-the-art technology in the plant biopharmaceutical field. Through 16 years of research, it has discovered a series of novel plant-derived recombinant human serum albumin injection drugs. Currently, more than 10 novel drugs are under development.
"Healthgen’s plant-derived recombinant human serum albumin injection is currently the only injection in the world that uses a plant expression system. I expect that it could fill the shortage in domestic recombinant human serum albumin,” said Dr. Ding Lieming, Chairman and CEO of Betta Pharmaceuticals.
In the domestic market for human serum albumin, Dr. Ding said demand far exceeds supply, with a high dependence on imports. “Recombinant protein drugs in preclinical and clinical stages have verified the innovative value of a rice endosperm expression system,” he added.
Yang Daichang, chairman of Healthgen Biotech, claimed that Healthgen would further develop the therapeutics based on two platforms: the rice endosperm cell recombinant protein expression platform and the recombinant protein purification platform. He explained that the company is committed to building first-in-class therapeutics.
Healthgen Biotech’s main competitors include Tiantan Biologic Group (Chinese: 天坛生物, SH:600161), Taibang Biologic Group (Chinese: 泰邦生物), Hualan Biologic Group (Chinese: 华兰生物, SHE: 002007).