Creative Biosciences Raises New Funding to Develop Early Diagnosis Kits for Colon Cancer

Healthcare Author: Yusuf Tuna Apr 12, 2019 05:35 PM (GMT+8)

Creative Biosciences is a Guangzhou based cancer screening and cancer diagnostic kits producer, developer and researcher. The company has announced on 12th April that it received CNY 300 million from IDG Capital in series B.

Zou Hongzhi, the founder of Creative Biosciences, is working at his lab in Guangzhou. Photo: Credit to Creative Biosciences Press Kit

Creative Biosciences (康立明生物) is a Guangzhou based cancer screenings and cancer diagnostic kits producer, developer and researcher. The company has announced on 12th April that it received CNY 300 million from IDG Capital in series B. The new financing will be used to develop early diagnosis kits for Colon Cancer (Colorectal cancer).

The company has already started marketing its early diagnosis kit for colon cancer, named Colosafe (长安心). Colosafe was approved and licensed by the National Medical Products Administration of China (NMPA) on 28 November 2018. Colosafe uses the faecal genetic testing method in the early diagnosis of colon cancer. 

"The survival rate of colorectal cancer rate in China is 10% lower than that of the United States. This is not because the vocational level of doctors in China is poor, but because the rate of early diagnosis is low." Wang Jianping (汪建平), former VP of Sun Yat-Sen University stated. Indeed, the early diagnosis of cancer rate is 40% in the USA, while China is only about 15%.
Colosafe brought a new and relatively more efficient approach in the early diagnosis of colon cancer.

Apart from Colosafe, Chinese clinics and hospitals use three primary methods to diagnose the Colon Cancer: questionaries, blood tests and colonoscopy. All of these three methods have some proven issues; they are inefficient and problematic. 
Colosafe is currently priced at CNY 1198, 1/3 to 1/2 of the similar products in the United States. According to Creative Biosciences, Colosafe has a higher detection specificity compare to its expensive competitors in the USA. 

The estimate of new cases diagnosed with colorectal cancer of China in 2011 was 310,244, accounting for 9.20% of overall new cancer cases. Colorectal cancer is attributable to smoking, alcohol drinking, overweight and obesity, physical inactivity and dietary factors.

Creative Biosciences has already set up a sales team across China. Zou Hongzhi (邹鸿志), the founder of Creative Biosciences and an eminent scientist, said that the sales team will further expand after the current round of financing. In addition to the Colosafe, Creative Biosciences is developing early diagnosis products for tumours such as lung cancer and bladder cancer. Creative Biosciences has established testing institutes in Guangzhou and Tianjin and has already obtained inspection qualifications.

Following the transaction, one of the partners of the company, CDH Investment stated that “Dr Zou Hongzhi is an outstanding scientist in the industry. He developed and marketed the first colorectal cancer genetic screening product ColoGuard in the United States. Now, he successfully developed the product ColoSafe particularly for Chinese.”

Market conditions, product characteristics and Creative Biosciences Team are entirely suitable for the company to occupy and enlarge its operational scale.