Leto Laboratories Completes Series C Financing of Over 100 Million RMB, Focusing on 0 to 1 Innovative Protein Design and Manufacturing Platform Construction

Leto Laboratories announced the completion of its Series C financing round with a funding size of over 100 million RMB. This round of financing was led by Zhongguancun Science City Corporation and followed by Infiniti Capital and HB Ventures. The round was mainly used for the clinical research of LTC004, a new-generation anti-tumor cytokine class drug of Leto Laboratories, and the early investment of the company’s GMP production platform.

Previously, Leto Laboratories had received investments from Sherpa Capital, Power Capital, Qirong Venture Capital, Waig Capital and other investors, and completed a Series B financing of over 100 million yuan in October 2020, co-invested by Yijing Capital and Qiaojing Capital, and also received a strategic investment from industrial party Junshi Bio. Then in July 2021, it received an exclusive nearly 100 million RMB B+ round of financing from CITIC Construction Investment.
Founded in 2014, Leto Laboratories is a biotechnology company focusing on protein engineering underlying technology to build an efficient, high quality and high market value biomolecule design platform and a unique prokaryotic biomolecule manufacturing technology platform.

In terms of biomolecule design platform, Leto Laboratories has built four core technology platforms: target discovery and protein molecular engineering design, high-throughput protein screening and activity identification, protein drug-forming modification and clinical development. The platform-based development concept has enabled Leto Laboratories to have strong product and pipeline expansion capabilities. Advanced molecular design concepts coupled with fast and powerful protein screening and manufacturing capabilities enable Leto Laboratories to rapidly complete the validation of innovative protein molecular design ideas and activities, break through existing patent barriers, and effectively reduce R&D project costs.

The construction of platform capabilities and the R&D ideas based on market and industrial needs have created the core competitiveness of Leto Laboratories’s high commercial value and high drug discovery pipeline. At present, Leto Laboratories has entered into more than ten drug pipeline development collaborations with well-known pharmaceutical companies such as Tonghua Dongbao, Junshi Biological, Hansen Pharmaceutical, and Qilu Pharmaceutical, and has achieved sustainable revenue in the form of milestone patent license fees and share of marketed sales.

Source: https://www.davispolk.com/experience/laekna-hk791-million-ipo