Medilink Raises $50 Million to Accelerate Antibody-Drug Conjugates for Cancer
Suzhou Medilink Therapeutics (Medilink), based in Suzhou, China, closed on a $50 million Series A financing round. An A1 series round was led by Apricot Capital and a series-A1 was co-led by Loyal Valley Capital and Qiming Venture Partners.
The company is focused on developing next-generation antibody-drug conjugates. These are typically a drug connected to an antibody that targets specific cells in order to deliver the drug more accurately to targeted tissues. There are no hints as to what makes their approach next generation, and although the technology itself is well known, it often has come up against technical barriers against cancer.
Early problems included low blood residency time, low penetration capacity to the tumor microenvironment, low payload potency, immunogenicity, unusual off-target toxicity and drug resistance.
“Our team has extensive knowledge in ADC technology and project development,” said Tongtong Xue, founder and chief executive officer of Medilink. “Our aim is to develop medicines with real benefit for patients around the world. The ADC field has experienced a series of significant breakthroughs in recent years and we believe that there is still an urgent need to develop more efficacious and safer ADC drugs. With support from our prestigious investors, we will focus on our conjugate platform and swiftly build up our differentiated pipeline, to meet huge unmet needs worldwide.”
The company was founded in 2020. Xue formerly was chief executive officer of Kelun-Biotech. Jiaqiang Cai, chief scientific officer of Medilink was previously vice president at Shanghai Hansoh Pharmaceutical. Liang Xiao, chief operations officer of Medilink, was the vice president at Kelun-Biotech and chief operations officer at Klus Pharma.
“The ADC drug development is highly complex, which requires a well-balanced approach of all components including antibody, linker, and payload,” said Jing Qiang, Partner at Apricot Capital. “Medilink has shown their strong know-how and unique insights in every step of ADC design and development. It is highly appreciated about the entrepreneurship and chemistry among the team members, and we are confident that the company will be able to grow as a leading drug conjugate technology platform in the world.”
The $50 million raised will be utilized to accelerate the company’s pipeline development and support the conjugate technology platform. The company said it “aims to serve the vast unmet medical needs in China, and create global value through conducting multicenter clinical trials and cross-border collaborations.”
“ADC is one of the most important approaches for cancer treatment,” said Roy (Ronggang) Xie, Partner at Loyal Valley Capital. “The advance of linker and payload technology has expanded the therapeutic applications of ADC. The Medilink team has the insight and knowledge edge in ADC R&D front. Since its founding, Medilink has shown strong execution capability and made rapid progress in fronts including projects, external collaborations and team building. We are honored to work with such an excellent team. Loyal Valley Capital will definitely be a long-term supporter of Medilink, which we believe will become a world-class leader in drug conjugate technology development.”
Kan Chen, Principal of Qiming Venture Partners, said, “Conjugated drugs have obvious advantages in fighting against cancers, especially malignant tumors. As the technical barriers are extremely high, ADC development is full of hope and challenges. Founded in Suzhou, China, Medilink has high ambitions for its ADC R&D to be globally competitive, and meet the needs of global patients in the future. The team has the vision, experience and capacities to achieve the goal.”