As a pioneer in the field of immuno-metabolism, META Pharmaceuticals Inc. (META Pharmaceuticals) has completed a 15M USD seed and Pre-A funding round. The name META derives from the word metabolism that symbolizes the company’s focus on the cross-regulation between metabolism and immunity.
Today, META Pharmaceuticals, China’s first immuno-metabolism-based small-molecule drug discovery company, announced that it had closed two consecutive funding rounds (seed and Pre-A rounds) totaling 15 million USD. Investors include Tiantu Capital, IMO Ventures, Forcefield Ventures, and XtalPi Inc.. In combining cutting-edge discoveries in immuno-metabolism and artificial intelligence (AI), META Pharmaceuticals has built an AI-powered metabolic target discovery platform and aims to develop the next generation of safer, more effective medicine for autoimmune diseases based on new biological mechanisms.
The autoimmune disease therapeutics market is the second-largest market segment after cancer treatments and is projected to reach 150 billion USD by 2025. An estimated 350-450 million patients are living with autoimmune diseases worldwide, and immune-suppressive drugs continuously rank at the top of the world’s best-selling blockbuster drugs. However, currently available medications are developed with biological theories and drug targets that are inherently problematic, leading to inevitable risks of severe side effects, low patient response rates, and many other problems.
META Pharmaceuticals was founded in August 2021 by researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center with extensive research experience in the emerging field of immuno-metabolism.
META Pharmaceuticals has built an AI-enabled drug target discovery platform for metabolic pathways and focus on developing first-in-class drugs for various chronic diseases caused by dysregulated immune and metabolic system. META Pharmaceuticals has discovered a series of new druggable targets with first-in-class potential. Through a close partnership with XtalPi and its industry-leading AI pharmaceutical R&D platform, META Pharmaceuticals debuts with three pipelines of first-in-class small molecule inhibitors, including one that could become a platform drug for a wide range of autoimmune diseases, and expect to file its first IND in both China and the US as early as 2024.
META Pharmaceuticals’s basic research, target discovery, and validation capabilities based on cellular and animal disease models are highly complementary to XtalPi’s AI drug discovery platform. Through close collaboration, the two companies will create a fast and reliable analytic and validation loop for new therapeutic targets and their mechanisms of actions, thus accelerating patent creation and drug discovery progress.
The new funding will help accelerate these projects toward clinical trials and further expand META Pharmaceuticals’s multi-omics-based AI platform, Meta-map, to cover more disease areas as it continues to grow its pipeline. META Pharmaceuticals will also expand its team and establish its first biology laboratory in Shenzhen to further strengthen the company’s research capabilities in biological theories and maintain its advantage in the immuno-metabolic field.
Dr. Ke Xu, Co-founder & CEO of META Pharmaceuticals, said, “Thanks to the support of our investors and partners, we were able to reach this significant milestone and raise two rounds of financing in just six months. META Pharmaceuticals aspires to become a global leader in immuno-metabolic drug discovery. With the power of AI and our three candidates quickly progressing through the pipeline, we hope to expedite the advent of next-generation autoimmune treatments that are safer and more effective and address the unmet needs of patients worldwide.”
Guoxing Wei, Partner at Tiantu Capital who led the Pre-A round investment, said, “We are glad to support such a unique and innovative company like META Pharmaceuticals and brilliant young scientists like Dr. Xu, whose discovery has defined a new and exciting path for better autoimmune disease treatments. We believe META Pharmaceuticals’s approach of combining cutting-edge biological discoveries with AI technology has the potential to drive breakthroughs in immuno-metabolic drug R&D and fundamentally improve the quality of life of millions of patients. ”
Dr. Shuhao Wen, Co-founder, and Chairman of XtalPi said, “META Pharmaceuticals is the first drug discovery company in China to focus on autoimmune diseases. Its ability to discover highly promising first-in-class autoimmune disease targets offers both exciting challenges and valuable insights to our AI drug discovery platform as we combine our advantages to uncover breakthrough treatments. XtalPi places great emphasis on the translation of scientific advancements into industry applications that are valuable and impactful. META Pharmaceuticals’s focus on the unmet clinical needs in autoimmune diseases has significant market potential. We look forward to working closely with this team of brilliant scientists and helping them develop a fruitful pipeline of revolutionary immuno-metabolism-based drugs. ”
IMO Capital’s partner Xiaowen Feng said, “From our first round of partnership with META Pharmaceuticals in 2021, we valued the team’s deep academic background and efficient AI development capabilities. META Pharmaceuticals’s new world-class biological theories and XtalPi’s world-class AI computational capabilities complement each other perfectly, together creating a piece of platform drug that has great potential to become a new blockbuster drug that could treat a broad spectrum of chronic diseases including, but not limited to autoimmune disorders.
About Meta Pharmaceuticals
Meta Pharmaceuticals Inc. is an original drug discovery company focused on autoimmune diseases, with a team of biomedical doctors from Weil Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, and incubated by a leading AI pharmaceutical company, XtalPi Technologies, in collaboration with leading domestic and international venture capital firms. Based on the cutting-edge emerging biology theories, META Pharmaceuticals is focusing on the development of the first-in-class drugs to meet the urgent needs of patients around the world by regulating the vitality of cellular metabolism to achieve effective regulation of immune system functions and discovering safer and more effective autoimmune disease targets.
META Pharmaceuticals has already established a deep collaboration with XtalPi for AI drug discovery and development. Through the fusion of basic R&D capabilities and intelligent computational analysis capabilities, the two companies have jointly created a new drug discovery paradigm of AI+biomedical research that could provide validation for the AI pharmaceutical industry.
About XtalPi Technologies
XtalPi Technologies is a quantum physics and AI-enabled drug discovery company dedicated to revolutionizing the drug discovery industry by improving the speed, scale, innovation, and success of drug discovery. As a US and China-based company serving the global market, XtalPi is committed to exploring optimal solutions to leverage cutting-edge R&D and computational resources to maximize the needs of our customers and collaborators.
XtalPi’s intelligent drug discovery platform integrates cloud-based supercomputing digital R&D tools with advanced experimental capabilities to form an R&D system where high-accuracy predictions and targeted experiments corroborate and guide each other. As one of the world’s pioneering AI drug discovery companies, XtalPi has established a set of R&D iterative processes that closely integrate quantum physics dry labs and advanced wet labs, challenging the efficiency bottleneck of traditional R&D and empowering new drug discovery to achieve breakthroughs in innovation speed and scale.
About IMO Ventures：
IMO Ventures is dedicated to early-stage investment in early-stage projects in emerging industries such as artificial intelligence, innovative consumer goods, healthcare, and financial technology, and to walking with the best entrepreneurs. IMO Ventures has invested in China, the U.S., Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, etc. The IMO Ventures team has entrepreneurial experience, understands the sweet and sour of entrepreneurship, and believes that science and technology will change the world. IMO currently has three USD funds and one RMB fund, and manages several SPV funds. We have made early investments in dozens of disruptive and innovative startups in their respective tracks, including Guazi Used Car, XtalPi Technologies, Deepview Technology, Paytm, Conflux, Lime, etc.
