Shenzhen NeoCura Bio-Medical Technology Co., Ltd. (Hereinafter referred to as “NeoCura”), one of the  most innovative high-tech enterprises committed to RNA platform drug development in China, has recently received the “A” round funding of RMB250 million yuan. This round of funding is provided  by Kunlun Capital as the lead investor and jointly followed by IDG Capital and Alwin Capital (a shareholder of the previous round)!

Founded in 2017, NeoCura is committed to building multi-omics big data  collection platform and multi-biomics database to perform  in-depth drug target mining and fully automated drug design based on AI algorithm and core bioinformatic technologies. Through application in clinical innovative RNA drugs development and  next-generation, safe, and efficient clinical precision diagnosis and treatment, NeoCura provides patients with one-stop full-cycle  solutions from screening, diagnosis, treatment to efficacy monitoring. The R&D pipelines of NeoCura cover a variety of indications including tumor immunotherapy, vaccines, rare diseases, and metabolism-related diseases.

NeoCura has brought together the world’s top scientists, senior industry experts, and a world-class academic advisor team. It has a core R&D team of 50+ people, including dozens of  PhD/post-doctors from prestigious schools such as Harvard University, Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Chinese Academy of Sciences. The team members used to hold core R&D posts in the world's top research institutions and companies including Harvard Medical School, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, and Allen Institute, etc. and have published hundreds of papers in the world's leading scientific research journals; their research fields cover gene testing, AI algorithm, bioinformatics, tumor immunotherapy, and vaccine development, etc.; and a number of team members have accumulated a great deal of translational and clinical experiences by leading the full-process work including drug  manufacture, clinical research, and registration) in many well-known pharmaceutical companies.

Ever since its foundation, NeoCura has been focusing on the development and clinical exploration of tumor immunity-related technologies. With the development of tumor immunology and molecular biology, immunotherapies that inhibit and kill tumor cells by mobilizing or activating the immune function of the body have become a new hot spot in the field of cancer treatment. Among them, cancer neoantigen vaccines have aroused wide  attention in the industry due to their  high safety in clinical use and  very efficient and specific ability to stimulate anti-tumor immune response. Through high-throughput genome sequencing and AI algorithm prediction,  it identifies the optimal non-self antigen fragments that have the greatest potential to be efficiently bound to and presented by patients' tumor cells so as to trigger the immune response of the body  to tumor-specific mutants, then synthesizes  the corresponding coding RNA in vitro and prepared RNA into vaccine products for  disease treatment.

Summarizing and refining public neoantigens from personalized cancer neoantigens is another field with the greatest application potential among the existing cancer neoantigen vaccines and related immune therapies. Through sequencing, neoantigen prediction, and data analysis of large number of clinical samples collected from tumor patients, multiple high-frequency and high-coverage neoantigen combinations are identified to form a public cancer neoantigen library for specific cancer, which significantly reduces the cost of neoantigen vaccine therapy and shortens the preparation time, thereby allowing more patients to benefit from the neoantigen immunotherapy.

“The accuracy of neoantigen prediction and the safety and effectiveness of vaccine delivery platform are the main determinants and major technical challenges to the efficacy of cancer neoantigen therapy”, said by Dr. Wang Yi, the founder of NeoCura. Confronting the industry technical barriers  and based on its expertise  in RNA drug development and technical superiority in multi-platform innovation, NeoCura has quickly built comprehensive data collection and supersensitivity molecular testing platform; proprietary AI algorithm and bioinformatics platform with sole ownership; safe and efficient RNA drug delivery platform, which jointly advance the clinical research of neoantigen vaccines.

Among them, the ALPINE cancer neoantigen prediction platform independently developed by NeoCura with sole ownership  offers 30%  higher accuracy of prediction compared with other public algorithms; the self-built MATHLA model provides superior  predictive effect on HLA allele-binding peptide mapping over the netMHCpan 4.0 and MHCflurry models which are  commonly used in the academia; the high-throughput and high-sensitivity cancer neoantigen immunogenicity detection platform ensures  response validation of neoantigen immunogenicity and real-time monitoring of immune response in patients.  These  are also the foundation for NeoCura to realize next-generation precision medical technology application, iterative optimization of algorithms, and efficient drug development and eventually provide patients with one-stop full-cycle  solution.

At present, NeoCura is conducting an exploratory clinical trial in patients with  interim  or advanced tumors to observe the overall safety and tolerability of neoantigen vaccines, the immunogenicity of the predicted neoantigens, and the clinical efficacy of this therapy.  Meanwhile, this clinical trial will also explore the feasibility and efficacy of neoantigen vaccines in a variety of solid tumors, different clinical application  settings, and drug combination regimens. In addition to personalized cancer neoantigen vaccine immunotherapy, NeoCura has  in parallel launched multiple public neoantigen projects for high-incidence cancer types such as gastric cancer, esophageal cancer, lung cancer, and liver cancer through large-scale gene sequencing of patient samples. Through neoantigen prediction and immunogenicity validation, a public cancer neoantigen database will be established. By now, the high-frequency public neoantigen screening, immunogenicity testing, and retrospective clinical validation for gastric cancer have been completed, the in-vivo safety  assessment trials and pharmacodynamic experiments are also in rapid progress.

So far, NeoCura has establishedRNA drug development center, AI bioinformatic laboratory, and GMP  manufacture  plant in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou respectively. It’s also working with dozens of hospitals in China to fully  facilitate  research and clinical  development of cancer neoantigen vaccine immunotherapy and RNA drugs at home and abroad.

For this round of financing, Dr. Wang Yi said that, “ The raised funds will accelerate the construction of GMP  plant, improve the accumulation of cancer neoantigen real-world data, and support the IND application of multiple RNA drug pipelines under development. In addition, it will speed up the expansion of NeoCura’s innovative product pipelines, contribute to technical breakthroughs in the global RNA pharmaceutical industry chain, and facilitate the clinical  application of tumor immunotherapy.”