February 24, 2021
YishengBio notes the new investment was co-led by Oceanpine and OrbiMed. After completing the Series B funding round, the company’s institutional investors include OrbiMed, Oceanpine, EightRoad, F-Prime Capital, 3W Capital, Hillhouse Capital, Adjuvant Capital, MSA Capital, AIHC, Epiphron Capital, Superstring Capital, Haitong International, etc.
This round of funding will strongly support the expansion of the company’s R&D center, accelerate our commercialization strategies including the clinical development of multiple vaccine candidates and the construction of biologics production facilities in China and Singapore. CEC Capital was the company’s exclusive financial advisor in Series B funding round.
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Tian Yuan Law Firm acted as the international legal counsel and legal counsel in China of YishengBio respectively.
Sidley Austin LLP acted as the legal counsel of OrbiMed and Adjuvant Capital. Han Kun Law Offices acted as the legal counsel of Oceanpine Capital.
YishengBio is a global, fully integrated biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Beijing. The company is engaged in discovering, developing and commercializing innovative biotherapeutics for cancers and infectious diseases using novel PIKA® immunomodulating technology. YishengBio operates in China, USA, and Singapore with over 500 employees. YishengBio’s YSJA™ rabies vaccine is the first alum-free lyophilized rabies vaccine launched in China.
The rabies vaccine has been commercialized in China and has served over 16 million patients for post-exposure protection against rabies. The novel PIKA immunomodulating technology platform is a new immunomodulation technology developed by YishengBio. Its proprietary PIKA technology augments both innate and adaptive immune responses through the TLR3, RIG-I and MDA5 pathways.
With the PIKA immunomodulating technology platform, YishengBio has developed a series of new immune drugs and innovative vaccine products and has obtained over 60 patents for its PIKA immunomodulating technology across more than 30 countries and regions. Being able to accelerate post-exposure immune protection, PIKA rabies vaccine has the potential to lead in the rabies vaccines market in the future.
The product has been cited as a novel vaccine by the World Health Organization and classified as a therapeutic biologics product by the China National Medical Products Administration.
The product is planned to enter into its global multi-center Phase III clinical trial. Other products in clinical development include YS-ON-001 for the treatment of advanced solid tumors, YS-HBV-001 for hepatitis B and PIKA YS-SC2-010, a prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine candidate against Covid-19 virus. PIKA YS-HBV-002 for chronic HBV and PIKA YS-ON-002 for solid tumor, among others, are product candidates in preclinical and discovery stages.
