Adagene Inc. Closes $8 Million Series A Financing with Fidelity Biosciences, Fidelity Asia Growth, and WuXi Venture Fund

SUZHOU, China, Dec. 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Adagene Inc. announced today the closing of an $8 million Series A financing with backing from Fidelity Biosciences, a leading investor in innovative world-class healthcare technologies; Fidelity Asia Growth, a leading investor in global innovative companies in Asia; and WuXi Venture Fund, the investment arm of WuXi PharmaTech, a leading open-access R&D capability and technology platform company serving the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries, with operations in China and the United States. 

Adagene is addressing two fundamental challenges within biologics research and development—vastly expanding the available antibody space and significantly enhancing the developability and drug-like qualities of antibody therapeutic leads.  This next-generation technology opens previously unaddressable complex target classes to mono-specific and IgG-like bi-specific antibodies.   

Located in China, Adagene is positioned to become a global leader in novel antibody therapeutic discovery.  Since incorporating in 2011, Adagene has created an expanding portfolio of highly developable libraries with high fidelity between design and construction, and diversity in excess of 10¹¹. 

A core component of the company's business strategy is to partner with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies committed to the next generation of therapeutic antibodies to create truly innovative products.  Consistent with this strategy, Adagene is entering into multiple partnerships with top-tier multinational companies for discovery and development of first-in-class antibody therapeutics.  Adagene is also committed to developing an internal pipeline focused on novel immune checkpoint targets and target combinations. 

"Adagene has pioneered new methods of antibody design and construction to make simple things easy and difficult things possible," said Peter Luo, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Adagene. "We continually build new libraries to explore important underrepresented and novel target spaces, with very high fidelity between design and construction."

"We are thrilled with Adagene's progress since its founding and are excited to be active participants in shaping the biopharmaceutical industry driven by technological breakthroughs," said Daniel Auerbach, Managing Partner/Senior Managing Director of Fidelity Growth Partners Asia. 

"Adagene embodies the concept of world-class innovation, harnessing a depth of cutting-edge technology and resources to build a disruptive force to transform biopharmaceutical drug discovery and development," said Thomas Beck, MD, Executive Partner, Fidelity Biosciences. 

About Adagene Inc.

Adagene Inc. is a venture-backed biotechnology company based in Suzhou, China, focused on the discovery and development of antibody therapeutics for partner companies and for its own internal pipeline.  Adagene's vision is to vastly expand the available epitope space through the discovery and development of novel antibody therapeutics with its proprietary Dynamic Precision Library (DPL) antibody platform technology.  For additional information about Adagene Inc., please visit www.adagene.com.

About Dynamic Precision Library Antibody Technology

Precise library design, construction, and integrated screening, driven by a streamlined information system, are central to Dynamic Precision Library (DPL) antibody technology.  DPL technology transforms the scope and precision of antibody therapeutics through quality by design, with total process control.  It results in the exploration of exponentially increased epitope space that is not represented through alternative methods.  The end result of Adagene's DPL platform is higher affinity and specificity of primary hits with broad epitope coverage.  Additionally, this technology gives substantial consideration to full-length mono-specific and bi-specific IgGs, preemptively engineering antibodies for developability.  

Disclaimer

In addition to statements of historical fact, this press release contains forward-looking statements based upon current expectations and estimates resulting from management's current best assumptions and forecasts about the company and the industry.  This press release makes no guarantee about future company or product performance.  Furthermore, future results involve risk due to the difficulty of predicting the outcome of key uncertainties and assumptions.  Actual outcomes may differ materially from the statements made in this press release.  These material variances may stem from a variety of sources, including unexpected experimental data and changes within the industry. 

Contact 
Max Dawson
Vice President, Business Development 
Email: [email protected]  
Phone: 86-512-87773632

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SOURCE Adagene Inc.