Yan Ning's team has raised funds again.
Investment community sources revealed that recently, Libo Biotech announced the completion of nearly 100 million yuan in Pre - A round financing, jointly led by Tasly Capital and Panlin Capital, with Yuansheng Venture Capital, Zhejiang Province's "4+1" Biomedical and High - end Equipment Industry Fund, and Chengxin Venture Capital participating in the follow - on investment.
Back in September 2022, Libo Biotech was officially established. The founding team gathered three scientists, Zhou Yaoqi, Zhan Jian, and Fang Chao. Right from its inception, it received angel round financing from Sequoia Capital China and Sinovation Ventures. What's most eye - catching is that Libo Biotech is a project incubated by Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, and the director of Shenzhen Bay Laboratory is Yan Ning.
This scenario is a vivid portrayal of the venture capital circle. Nowadays, VCs are popularly looking for projects in places where scientific research talents are most concentrated - wherever there is a research institute, there are venture capitalists.
Three people, nearly 100 million yuan in financing
"We have always been committed to building a complete innovation chain 'from the laboratory to the clinic'. The case of Libo Biotech is the fruitful result of this concept," said Yan Ning, the director of Shenzhen Bay Laboratory and the president of Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences, congratulating Libo Biotech on its financing.
She believes that this is also a vivid example of Shenzhen's full - force promotion of the transformation of cutting - edge basic research results into new productive forces.
According to investment community sources, there are three scientific research giants behind Libo Biotech. Professor Zhou Yaoqi, the scientific founder, has been deeply involved in the field of structural computing for nearly 30 years. Dr. Zhan Jian, the founder and CEO, is the core inventor of "wet - dry closed - loop" RNA stable tertiary structure discovery methods such as CODA and Mobi - Seq. Dr. Fang Chao, the founder and CTO, has long been engaged in small - molecule drug development and has over 8 years of industrialization development experience in targeting RNA small molecules.
The story starts with Zhou Yaoqi. In 1984, after graduating from the Department of Modern Chemistry at the University of Science and Technology of China, Zhou Yaoqi went overseas to study and lived abroad for more than 30 years.
(Zhou Yaoqi, from the official website)
It wasn't until 2021 that Zhou Yaoqi joined the newly established Shenzhen Bay Laboratory and served as the deputy director of the Institute of Systems and Physical Biology. Zhou Yaoqi spent more than a year building a scientific research team of more than 20 people.
But the real story was just beginning. In September 2022, Libo Biotech was born. Relying on the team's previous research, since its establishment, Libo Biotech has set its sights on the RNA field. By combining AI with various disciplines, it has opened up a new direction: discovering stable tertiary structures in RNA and predicting their folding shapes and the existence of small - molecule binding pockets.
Soon, investors came knocking.
Sinovation Ventures and Sequoia Capital China Seed Fund jointly invested, and Libo Biotech quickly completed its angel round financing. The latest development is that the company's Pre - A round financing of nearly 100 million yuan has just been finalized, led by Tasly Capital and Panlin Capital, with Yuansheng Venture Capital, Zhejiang Province's "4+1" Biomedical and High - end Equipment Industry Fund, and Chengxin Venture Capital participating in the follow - on investment.
When talking about the reasons for their investment, investors unanimously mentioned that small - molecule targeted RNA drugs are emerging and gradually becoming a key area of focus. In addition, the imaginative application prospects of AI in the biomedical field also attract investors.
As far as we know, this is the first project of Shenzhen Bay Laboratory to come into the view of the venture capital circle.
The hidden treasure in Shenzhen
In the past, investors have talked to us about Shenzhen Bay Laboratory more than once.
Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, also known as the Guangdong Laboratory of Life Information and Biomedicine, was established in 2018. Currently, the laboratory has more than 1,200 employees, more than 100 scientific research teams, and 9 directly affiliated research institutions. In terms of specific research directions, Shenzhen Bay Laboratory has two paths. One is to jointly tackle major scientific problems in life and health, and the other is to explore the integration of IT + BT and multidisciplinary intersections.
Since its establishment, the laboratory has reached cooperation with leading enterprises such as Huawei and China Resources Group, and has incubated technology companies such as Bay Imaging Technology and Libo Biotech. Among them, Bay Imaging Technology is a developer of early medical diagnostic equipment and has received multiple rounds of financing from institutions including BGI Songhe Angel Fund, Lihe Zhihui, and Lihe Kechuang.
Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences was Yan Ning's first stop after returning to China. At that time, she mentioned in a speech that she would assist Shenzhen in establishing a new - type R & D institution integrating scientific research, transformation, funding, and student training. One year later, Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences was officially inaugurated.
Relatively speaking, Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences focuses more on clinical medical research, while Shenzhen Bay Laboratory focuses more on basic and applied basic research and promoting industrial transformation. Benefiting from the influence of a group of "star scholars" led by Yan Ning, and the unconventional talent recruitment methods of the two scientific research institutions, Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences and Shenzhen Bay Laboratory have attracted great attention in the venture capital circle.
In the scientific research institutions in Shenzhen, it's not the only one that investors flock to. In fact, several years ago, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology had already become a popular destination for domestic VCs. Leading domestic institutions such as Fortune Capital and Tongchuang Weiye have visited and communicated in groups. Since its establishment in 2006, the official website shows that more than 2,200 enterprises have been incubated here.
Thus, a "scientific research - incubation - industry" path has taken root in Shenzhen, and investors are coming in an endless stream.
VCs flock to research institutes
"Nowadays, VCs have to go to scientific research institutions and university laboratories to look for projects."
Behind this is a relay race in the venture capital circle: local governments introduce universities and scientific research institutions, and investors follow closely, going deep into research institutes to do the work of achievement transformation.
Practice has proved that venture capital institutions are an indispensable part of the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. Looking back over the past few years, VCs have been actively looking for projects in major universities and recruiting professors. Many investors are regulars at the technology transfer offices of universities such as Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The latest scenario is: Investors are stepping out of the sea of business plans and turning their attention to research institutes across the country.
A Beijing - based investor once sighed to the investment community, "Every time I go on a business trip, I have to scan the projects in local research institutes."
VC/PE has reached a general consensus: hard technology is likely to be the investment theme for the next decade, and universities and research institutions are important sources of high - tech achievements.
Therefore, to invest in good projects, one has to go earlier and go to the place where innovation is first born.
In fact, the core advantage of scientific research institutions lies in the combination of talent, resources, and policy barriers, which are often the most crucial elements for an early - stage technology project. Especially compared with traditional project sources, scientific research institutions focus on cutting - edge fields, and the proportion of people with a doctoral degree or above usually exceeds 70 - 80%. In the era of hard technology, they are more likely to produce disruptive innovation results.
Furthermore, scientific research institutions have a strong R & D atmosphere, but are different from the academic pressure and administrative complexity of universities, which facilitates the actual implementation of products. Just as Zhou Yaoqi said when talking about why he joined Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, "Scientific research needs to provide stable support so that some people can focus on research and make more original and leading explorations."
The change of VCs looking for projects in places where scientific research talents are concentrated has far - reaching implications. And the degree of concentration of scientific research talents is quietly determining the future of a city.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Investment Community" (ID: pedaily2012), author: Yang Wenjing, published by 36Kr with authorization.