The funding will help the company to expand its clinical development and R&D pipeline in its self-developed innovation platform.
Clover Biopharmaceuticals (三叶草生物制药), a Sichuan-based clinical-stage firm, announced it had completed a Series B funding round worth CNY 304 million (USD 43 million) led by two healthcare-focused VC firms, Hong Kong-based VC Delos Capital and Beijing-based VC Lapam Capital (龙磐投资).
The funding round also saw participation from Betta Capital (贝达生物医药产业基金), Sichuan Health Care Industry Fund (四川省健康养老产业股权投资基金), Beijing Zhongguancun VC (北京中关村创投) and Jinlong Group (金龙集团跟投).
The latest fundraising led the company’s total funding to reach over CNY 740 million (USD 100 million), according to official company data.
Founded by Liang Peng (梁朋) in 2007, Clover is a biotechnology company that focuses on discovering, developing and commercializing transformative biological therapies (with a focus on oncology and autoimmune diseases).
The company has developed its drug platform, named the ‘Trimer-Tag technology platform,’ which allows the production of novel, covalently-trimerized fusion proteins, which contribute to drugs used to combat certain significant diseases (like tumors).
The firm claims to be among the few global technology companies based in China with both innovative drug development platforms and in-house cGMP biomanufacturing capabilities, a status that has been well-recognized.
After the funding round, Tim Xiao, the financial and risk manager of Delos Capital, and Xu Guangyu (徐光宇), partner of Lapam Capital, expressed their satisfaction towards Clover’s recent achievements as they became the new members of Clover’s board.
We are very optimistic about Clover's R&D team and the firm technology platform, and we look forward to supporting Clover in bringing its innovative and highly effective drugs to market as soon as possible,’ said Xu Guangyu.
We are honored to invest in clover. Clover has made great progress in advancing its unique and original patented technology platform from conceptual development to clinical trials,’ said Tim Xiao.
Note that Lapam Capital and Delos Capital have been among the well-recognized healthcare investors in China, particularly in the biopharmaceutical area.
With three funds under management, Lapam manages over CNY 2 billion (USD Zymeworks #285 million) in its portfolio. In 2018, the company biopharmaceutical’s investment portfolio created half of all NDA (New Drug Applications) filings for innovative drugs in China.
So far, Delos Capital’s healthcare portfolio comprises two funds, with over CNY 2.3 billion (USD 330 million) staked, which mainly represents investments carried out in China and the United States.
The biotech company is in the same league with Canadian-based biotherapeutics provider Zymeworks and America-based Aimmune Therapeutics, which have created an advanced innovative platform to develop their drugs pipeline.
Zymeworks has built three therapeutics platforms, including Azymetric™, ZymeLink™, and EFECT™, to create an advanced therapeutics pipeline, while Aimmune has built a CODITTM platform to treat severe food allergies. Both firms have separately raised a total of over USD 398 million and USD 125 million.
As the number of patents granted to Chinese firms experienced considerable growth in past years, researchers have estimated that the Chinese biotechnology market generated around USD 18.5 billion in 2017, with a CAGR of 8.3% between 2012 and 2017.