Excalipoint Therapeutics will use its seed money to advance a pipeline of cancer therapies, including a tri-specific antibody for small cell lung cancer and neuroendocrine tumors.
Excalipoint Therapeutics is entering the cancer arena with $68.7 million in starting capital and a mission to develop better T cell immunotherapies for difficult-to-treat malignancies.
The oversubscribed seed round, announced in a Wednesday release, includes a $41 million initial raise when Excalipoint was founded in August 2025, as well as a $27.7 million extension round led by MPCi and Centurium Capital. Lilly Asia Ventures, the pharma’s biomedical funding firm based in Hong Kong, participated in the extension effort, alongside Eisai Innovation.
Based in Shanghai, Excalipoint will use the seed money to advance a pipeline of six assets that it claims have first- or best-in-class potential. One of these candidates is EXP011, a tri-specific antibody that targets the DLL3, CD3 and 4-1BB proteins and which is being developed for small cell lung cancer and neuroendocrine tumors.
Excalipoint is currently running a Phase 1/2 study of EXP011, with the first patient dosed in October last year.
There are several other tri-specific antibodies in Excalipoint’s pipeline, including EXP012, which is designed to bind to CDH17, CD3 and 4-1BB to treat colorectal, gastric and pancreatic cancers. There’s also EXP016 for solid tumors with high unmet need, though the biotech did not reveal what its targets are.
Aside from pushing the pipeline forward, Excalipoint will use the seed proceeds to further develop its proprietary technologies: TOPAbody for generating tri-specific molecules, T-Cell Immune Shield to boost efficacy and specificity and TCE Probody to unlock previously undruggable targets.
“By combining science and capital with China’s clinical development efficiency and access to large patient populations, we can rapidly generate clinical data while advancing a pipeline of differentiated therapies,” Excalipoint CEO Lei Fang said in a prepared statement on Wednesday. Fang previously held leadership roles at Lepu Biopharma and I-Mab Biopharma.
“Our progress reflects the strength and maturity of China’s biotech ecosystem,” Fang added. Indeed, the Asian giant has become an attractive destination for the biopharma industry, driven primarily by the speed at which it can execute innovation, according to a January report from McKinsey & Company.
For instance, taking a drug from early discovery to an investigational new drug application is 50% to 70% faster in China “due to parallelized workflows, dense [contract research organization] ecosystems, and a culture of executional intensity,” the report explained. The country’s “large and concentrated patient pools” also help accelerate late-stage development, while reforms to drug regulation have made regulatory approvals quicker.
These factors have helped facilitate a rush from some of the industry’s biggest players to ramp up investment in China. In January, AstraZeneca pledged a $15 billion package to be disbursed there through the end of the decade, meant to boost its domestic capacity in cell therapies and radioconjugates.
Other pharma giants that have recently made investments in China include Novartis, Roche and Pfizer.
