CellOrigin Closed a New Round of Investment to Jump-start its iPSC Immune Cell Therapy Products Toward Clinics

HANGZHOU, China, March 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Mar.21, 2022, CellOrigin Inc, a biotech company focusing on iPSC-derived immune cell therapies, announced it secured a new round of investment of ~100 million RMB from Jifeng Ventures, Kunlun Capital, Yinxinggu Capital and Efung Capital.

CellOrigin is committed to develop engineered iPSC-derived CAR-macrophage and CAR-NK cell product. Integrating single cell atlas of differentiation, AI and synthetic biology approaches, CellOrigin developed its technology platform to learn from developmental biology in order to optimize more efficient differentiation methods, and to design more effective cell products. Building on its proprietary technology platform of engineering macrophage and DC cells through iPSCs, CellOrigin aims to make engineered clonal iPSC-derived off-the-shelf immune cell products in large scale for cancer immunotherapy applications.

The founding members of the CellOrigin team have rich experiences in cell therapies in academia and industry. The scientific co-founder Dr. Jin Zhang is a principal investigator at Zhejiang University, and was trained at the Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School before he joined the university in 2017. His team for the first time reported the iPSC-derived CAR-macrophage or CAR-iMac. He is fully committed to enable the next generation of innovative cell products with the continuous input of research on developmental biology and new disruptive technologies.

Dr.Jiansong Tong joined CellOrigin as a co-founder and CEO in September,2021. After received his Ph.D. from Iowa State University, he went to the Scripps Research Institute to begin his postdoc study on the genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis etc. by applying gene therapy methods. In 2015, he started his industry career at the Sorrento Therapeutics as a Research Scientist of CAR-T cell therapy. Later 2017, he joined well-known domestic pharmaceutical companies as Director/Head of Cell Therapy Department responsible for UCAR-T cell product development. He has tremendous experiences on antibody discovery, R&D, process development, and cGMP manufacture of CAR-T cell, as well as assay development and quality control system.

CellOrigin has a strong belief in the advantages and promise brought by iPSC + synthetic biology for the next generation of cell therapy product. Its proprietary innate immune cell CAR-iMac differentiation and engineering method has secured patents in China and Australia, and started the process to enter the US and other countries. More proprietary designs related to phagocytosis, polarization and other features of innate immune cells will be cumulatively integrated to CellOrigin's pipeline. Led by a professional CMC team with rich experiences in cell therapies, these products will be manufactured at CellOrigin's "B+A" GMP facility at Hangzhou, and move forward to clinical trials this year to bring benefits to patients.

SOURCE CellOrigin