META is a company focusing on the R&D of drugs for autoimmune diseases. The founding team is composed of biomedical doctors from Cornell University. It is jointly invested and incubated by AI pharmaceutical enterprise XtalPi (Chinese: 晶泰科技) and Forcefield Ventures.
META Pharmaceuticals (Chinese: 默达生物科技)., a small molecule innovative drug R&D company targeting metabolism, announced that it had completed seed and pre-Series A rounds of financing totaling hundreds of millions of CNY. The leading investors include Forcefield Ventures, XtalPi (Chinese: 晶泰科技), IMO ventures, Tiantu Capital (Chinese: 天图资本), with the following participation of Optimas Capital (Chinese: 方圆资本), Decent Capital (Chinese: 德迅投资), Yael Capital (Chinese: 雅亿资本), New Industries Venture Capital (Chinese: 新产业创投) and Bopu Fund (Chinese: 博普资本).
The fund will be used to accelerate the clinical trial process of three small molecules targeted innovative drugs, further expand the development of its AI metabolic enzyme target discovery platform, and complete the prediction and verification of more different indications.
Autoimmune disease is a kind of inflammatory immune disease characterized by dysregulation of the immune system, which produces antibodies that attack the body's own cells, mainly including rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriasis, ulcerative colitis, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, and asthma.
About 5% to 8% of the global population is threatened by autoimmune diseases. The increasing disability and mortality rate also reflect that the diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune diseases are facing great challenges.
Global pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, and Alberta have their product pipelines in the autoimmunity area. Chinese enterprises focusing on the research and development of autoimmune disease drugs include Inmagene Bio (Chinese: 创响生物), Connect Biopharm (Chinese: 康乃德), and so on.