CDH Investments is an international alternative asset fund manager with over $27 billion of assets under management. CDH Investments was established in 2002 by the former private equity group of China International Capital Corporation and is managed by an experienced team of senior private equity professionals who have worked together for many years focusing all their professional time on investing in China. CDH has consistently delivered superior returns relative to industry peers and is well positioned to continue to generate superior returns due to the team's proven investment experience and expertise investing in China.

CDH Investments

5Y Capital is a firm engaged in providing early-stage venture investments. It was formerly known as Morningside Venture Capital. The investment firm manages USD 5bn in dual-currency funds in USD and RMB, backed by world-renowned sovereign wealth funds, family offices, fund of funds, university endowments, pensions, and foundations. It was headquartered in Xuhui, Shanghai, China in 2008 by Ken Shi and Richard Liu.

5Y Capital

Tiantu Capital is a venture capital association.

Tiantu Capital

Shunwei Capital is a venture capital fund that focuses on early to mid-stage investments in local internet industry. It specializes in incubation, startups, early to mid-stage, and growth capital investments. It seeks to invest in the technology, media, telecommunications, high technology, new media, games, internet finance, and rural area internet sectors. Their investors include sovereign wealth funds, fund of funds, university endowment funds, and family offices. Shunwei Capital is a China-based company that was founded in 2011 by Tuck Lye Koh and Lei Jun.

Shunwei Capital

Sky9 Capital is a leading venture capital fund dedicated to supporting disruptive technologies and outstanding innovators to drive change and create positive impact for society, the environment and individual lives. Sky9 Capital team includes senior experts, entrepreneurs, and experienced investors from diverse backgrounds. Since 2011, the team has managed a number of USD and RMB funds, whose total assets under management of nearly USD 2 billion.

Sky9 Capital

Lapam Capital is a healthcare-focused venture capital firm.

Lapam Capital

XtalPi is a pharmaceutical technology company that is reinventing the industry’s approach to drug research and development with its Intelligent Digital Drug Discovery and Development (ID4) platform. Through its tightly interwoven quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, and high-performance cloud computing algorithms, the ID4 platform enables pharmaceutical companies to increase their efficiency, accuracy, and success rate at critical stages of drug R&D. By accelerating the pace of drug discovery and development, XtalPi aims to contribute to a healthier society worldwide. Founded in 2014 by a group of quantum physicists at MIT, XtalPi has since grown into an elite team of researchers with multi-disciplinary expertise in physics, chemistry, pharmaceutical R&D, and algorithm design. XtalPi has received much recognition for its cutting-edge technologies, its innovative solutions, and the breadth of potential applications of its offerings across the pharmaceutical value chain, which has allowed it to gain industry approval and establish strategic partnerships with several top international pharmaceutical companies.

XtalPi

Yael Capital is an investment management company that focuses on private equity investment and fund management. The company is mainly focused in early investments in biotechnology companies and other fields. Yael Capital was founded in 2018 and is based in Shenzhen, China.

Yael Capital Management Limited

The CMT Research Foundation is a patient-led non-profit dedicated to developing treatments and cures for Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

CMT Research Foundation

ReviR Therapeutics

ReviR Therapeutics is a genomics-based platform that develops novel medicines targeting human RNAs. Its RNA therapeutics treat cancer, rare genetic disorders, and infectious diseases. It also develops an AI-based and computation-empowered platform to discover RNA-targeting therapeutics.

<div>Based in San-Francisco and China, ReviR Therapeutics leverages AI and machine learning to discover and develop novel small-molecule therapeutics, targeting ribonucleic acid (RNA) to treat cancer, infectious diseases, and rare genetic disorders.&nbsp;</div>

Artificial intelligence is identifying and testing new therapies faster than ever.

AI Drug Discovery

ReviR Therapeutics & Kennedy's Disease Association partner to advance treatment for rare neuromuscular disorder

<div>
 
 Based in San-Francisco and China, ReviR Therapeutics leverages AI and machine learning to discover and develop novel small-molecule therapeutics, targeting ribonucleic acid (RNA) to treat cancer, infectious diseases, and rare genetic disorders.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s AI-powered drug discovery platform VoyageR combines human genetic data, genomics, and AI to identify the relevant structural and functional RNA patterns and understand the RNA life cycle, to identify novel RNA targets and RNA drugs.&nbsp;
 
 
 Founded in 2021, the company raised USD 20 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7829">
 pre-Series A funding
 </a>
 round in January 2022, to develop its platform further and grow its team of 25 wet lab/dry lab scientists (as of January 2022).
 
</div>

<div>
 
 HiberCell is a biotechnology company that develops novel therapies focused on oncology. It entered the AI drug discovery space when it acquired AI genomics analysis company Genuity Science (and its subsidiaries in Iceland and Ireland) in August 2021.&nbsp;
 
 
 Genuity Science&rsquo;s solutions include end-to-end therapeutic discovery and development services such as building custom disease datasets, discovering and prioritizing targets, identifying biomarkers, and optimizing clinical trials. Genuity Science leverages its AI-powered platform to manage, process, and analyze genomic data. HiberCell intends to use Genuity Science&rsquo;s AI/ML capabilities to advance its oncology pipeline of five programs, of which one has reached the Phase 2 clinical trial stage.
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company&rsquo;s pipeline included three drug candidates, namely: 1) HC-7366, targeting the general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2) kinase as part of the integrated stress response (ISR) signaling pathway; 2) HC-5404, aimed at inhibiting the PKR-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK) involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling pathway; and 3) odetiglucan, a therapy targeting tumor-immune interactions within the tumor microenvironment​.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In December 2023, HiberCell and Merck &amp; Co partnered to conduct a Phase Ib trial to evaluate the combination therapy of belzutifan and HC-7366 for treating clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Further, in January 2021, the company partnered with Biodesix to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay as a companion diagnostic test.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://hibercell.com/news/hibercell-closes-67-4-million-series-b-financing-and-secures-30-million-debt-facility-from-hercules-capital/">
 May 2021
 </a>
 , HiberCell completed a Series B financing round, raising USD 67.4 million, and secured an additional USD 30 million in debt financing from Hercules Capital. The funds were expected to be used for clinical advancement of its novel therapeutic candidates. 
 
</div>

HiberCell

<div>
 
 Arbor Biotechnologies specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for a variety of indications, starting with liver-related diseases. It operates an AI-powered biodiscovery platform to discover novel CRISPR enzymes, which are sequences of repeating genetic code. To do this, its platform deploys computational search techniques, genome sequencing, gene synthesis, and high-throughput screening. This can eventually be turned into drugs or even applied to agriculture and other industrial uses. In 2018, the company announced the discovery of Cas13d, a new type of gene editing enzyme that helps to alter RNA to treat genetic diseases.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of February 2024, the company had five internal drug discovery programs, of which one was in the IND-enabling stage. It also has multiple collaborative programs under development focused on oncology and various other therapeutic areas.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has a long-standing partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals since
 <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190103005194/en/Vertex-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Establish-Collaboration-to-Discover-Novel-Proteins-to-Advance-Discovery-of-Gene-Editing-Therapies">
 January 2019
 </a>
 , which focused on developing gene-editing treatments for cystic fibrosis and four other diseases. The alliance was further extended in 
 <a href="https://www.biospace.com/article/vertex-and-arbor-strike-a-1-2-billion-deal-for-gene-editing-programs/">
 August 2021
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15741">
 January 2023
 </a>
 .&nbsp;
 
 
 Other partnerships included a collaboration with 
 <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arbor-biotechnologies-announces-collaboration-with-ginkgo-bioworks-to-advance-the-discovery-and-development-of-precision-gene-editors-302011991.html">
 Ginkgo Bioworks
 </a>
 (December 2023) to leverage Ginkgo's R&amp;D services to further optimize Arbor's novel precision editors, a non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/08/2380680/0/en/EdiGene-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Announce-Worldwide-Non-exclusive-License-Agreement-to-Advance-Ex-Vivo-Engineered-Cell-Therapy-Programs.html">
 EdiGene
 </a>
 (February 2022) to leverage Arbor&rsquo;s platform for ex vivo oncology therapies, a strategic research and non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://investors.tcr2.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tcr2-therapeutics-and-arbor-biotechnologies-establish">
 TCR2 Therapeutics
 </a>
 (January 2022) to develop allogeneic TRuC T-cell therapies using Arbor&rsquo;s CRISPR technology, and a license agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.lonza.com/news/2020-12-23-14-00">
 Lonza
 </a>
 (December 2020) to use Arbor&rsquo;s gene-editing technology for Lonza&rsquo;s bioproduction products and services.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its latest Series B funding round in November 2021, which was led by Ally Bridge Group, TCG Crossover, and Temasek, Arbor Biotechnologies raised USD 215 million. The proceeds of the round were earmarked to fuel the company&rsquo;s clinical development pipeline.
 
</div>

Arbor Biotechnologies

Based in the UK, Arctoris provides an automated drug discovery platform, offering fully validated research and development (R&amp;D) processes under an Experiments-as-a-Service model. The company works with biotechnology companies, AI drug discovery companies, pharma and academic institutions enabling these institutions to run experiments in Arctoris’s platform and provides on-demand access to a broad scale of datasets for AI drug discovery companies to train their algorithms.

Arctoris

<div>
 
 Frontier Medicines leverages AI/ML technologies to develop treatments for cancer-causing proteins that are dismissed by traditional pharma companies as undruggable.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company has a proprietary chemoproteomic platform which entails an approach based on the interaction of small-molecule compounds and proteins to screen a large number of targets and combine them with a protein database that contains more than 150,000 novel binding pockets (hotspots). This enables it to access 90% of the human proteome that were not previously targeted due to lack of hotspots. The platform&rsquo;s AI/ML engine incorporates a library of diverse compounds, a hotspot map that serves as the starting point for understanding the druggability of a potential therapeutic target, and lead design and generation.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company focuses on oncology and immunology target and, as of February 2024, it had five wholly-owned therapeutic programs and three AbbVie-partnered programs in its pipeline. All programs were in their discovery stage, except the company&rsquo;s lead candidate, FMC-376 (activated and inactivated forms), focused on treating different cancer types, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal carcinoma (CRC), and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which is in the IND-enabling stage.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company entered a USD 100 million partnership with 
 <a href="https://news.abbvie.com/2020-12-02-AbbVie-and-Frontier-Medicines-Establish-Global-Partnership-to-Discover-and-Develop-Novel-Therapies-and-E3-Degraders-Against-Difficult-to-Drug-Targets">
 AbbVie
 </a>
 In December 2020 to develop small-molecule therapeutics against hard-to-drug protein targets including around 600 E3 ligases (the enzymes that drive the ubiquitination and degradation of proteins.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In July 2021, the company raised USD 88.5 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4347">
 Series B
 </a>
 funding round co-led by Woodline Partners LP and RA Capital Management, with equal participation from Deerfield Management Company. The proceeds were earmarked for advancing the company&rsquo;s drug pipeline and expanding operations in Boston, where its new facility was to complement the company&rsquo;s headquarters in California. 
 
</div>

Frontier Medicines

<div>
 
 Verge Genomics is a biotechnology company engaged in developing therapeutics for neurological diseases using human genomics and AI to accelerate drug discovery. The main target areas are Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson&rsquo;s Disease (PD), and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD).&nbsp;
 
 
 It has built a proprietary all-human platform (unlike standard clinical trials that rely on animal data), called CONVERGE, that uses data sets from brain tissue samples of deceased patients with ALS and PD. While most drugs target only one gene at a time, the company claims its technology can identify hundreds of genes that cause disease and develop drugs that target all the genes at the same time. The company uses AI technology to optimize the drug discovery process as a whole.
 
 
 As of March 2024, Verge had one drug candidate in the clinical stage (Phase I) and 10 drug candidates in the discovery stage.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has partnerships with various tissue banks (such as Harvard University and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine) and several educational institutes and foundations (such as Target ALS, Answer ALS) that enabled its drug discovery platform.&nbsp;
 
 
 In addition, the company&rsquo;s customers include several pharmaceutical companies, such as 1) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-announces-research-collaboration-with-the-sheffield-institute-for-translational-neuroscience">
 Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN)
 </a>
 to accelerate the validation of novel drug targets and screening of drug compounds for Parkinson's disease (February 2021), 2) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4146">
 Eli Lilly
 </a>
 to research and develop novel therapies to treat ALS (July 2021), 3) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21707">
 Alexion
 </a>
 to identify novel drug targets for rare neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases (September 2023), and 4) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-and-the-pritzker-neuropsychiatric-disorders-research-consortium-form-cutting-edge-schizophrenia-research-collaboration">
 Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium
 </a>
 to analyze data from schizophrenic patient&rsquo;s brain tissue with Verge&rsquo;s technology (October 2023).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2021, Verge raised USD 98 million in an oversubscribed 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7426">
 Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by BlackRock. The funds were used to scale up its pre-clinical and clinical candidate programs in the pipeline and enhance its lead therapeutics through clinical testing. 
 
</div>

Verge Genomics

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies for drug discovery services such as target selection, validation and lead optimization.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to design and run preclinical experiments.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to identify biomarkers (measurable biological signs used to determine disease progression) and predict drug response.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies aggregating and analyzing biomedical data with the help of AI to generate insights across the drug development pipeline.

Biotechnology companies that have integrated AI as a core component of their in-house drug development process. They typically have a few in-house drug development programs, and also collaborate with pharma companies to develop certain drugs.

Includes companies that use GenAI as a core part of their product offering for drug discovery & development

Companies leverage GenAI to support drug discovery through accelerated drug designing

Companies offer AI/ML-based SaaS products to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics

Offers AI/ML-based solutions to accelerate drug discovery and development

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

<div>
 
 ReviR Therapeutics, a company that develops drugs using AI, has received a research grant from the Kennedy's Disease Association (KDA). The sum was not disclosed. The grant is intended for researching treatment methods for Kennedy's disease or spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA). This follows a previous KDA research grant of USD 99,500 given to ReviR in 2024.
 The company's goal is to find a small molecule that can target and eliminate harmful mRNA in SBMA patients. This can lead to a decrease in toxic protein levels and a potential alteration in disease progression. The endeavor is a collaboration between ReviR's tech expertise and KDA's patient-oriented approach, aiming to discover improved treatment options for SBMA patients.
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 ReviR Therapeutics will leverage its VoyageR AI discovery platform for this drug discovery collaboration to identify molecules that induce the destruction of disease mRNA by incorporating a novel pseudo exon. The proceeds of the company's most recent funding round, a Series A financing round led by Lapam Capital in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/32034"> July 2024 </a> , were dedicated to enhancing the Voyager platform.

ReviR Therapeutics

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