SHANGHAI, June 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On 11 June 2020, Viva BioInnovator (VBI) successfully held its 1st Demo Day e-congress. Among nearly 50 incubation portfolio companies from the VBI platform, 8 startup companies attended this event, namely Forkhead Bio Therapeutics, DTx Pharma, Epican Technology, Acelink Therapeutics, TechnoDerma, VersaPeutics, Arthrosi Therapeutics and Totient, covering numerous fields including hereditary nephropathy, gout, diabetes, dermatological diseases, spinal cord injuries and early diagnosis of oncology. Over 200 domestic and overseas top-tier investors, representatives of investment institutions, R&D representatives of pharmaceutical companies, etc. participated in the event and conducted in-depth communication with company founders in an interactive way online.
Dr. David Xu, the Chief Business Officer of Viva Biotech, said, 'Leveraging Viva Biotech's world-leading structure-based drug discovery platform, innovative equity-for-service (EFS) business model as well as a novel drug R&D partner team of nearly 30 experts, VBI's innovative drug investment has reached a certain scale. Innovation in biopharmaceutical field requires cooperation between various parties. As an open platform focusing on biopharmaceutical innovation, VBI upholds a compatible attitude and is willing to enter into in-depth cooperation and communication with VC/PE, biotech companies, colleges, research institutions and other complementary CRO service institutions, to help companies grow fast, together establishing a biopharmaceutical innovation ecosystem.'
Apart from the conventional guests speech session, investor representatives from Sequoia Capital, Kaitai Capital, WisdoMont Asset Management, LH Ventures, etc., who had invested in those invited incubated companies, were also invited to VBI Demo Day. The previous investors shared their investment logics in aspects of technical path, market prospects and competitive strengths of each project.
VBI has been maintaining close cooperation with global renowned institutes, incubation centers, domestic and overseas investment institutions and biopharmaceutical industry conferences. It reviews approximately 600 to 1,000 projects every year with a strict reviewing scheme, under which the pass rate is only 5%. As of the end of 2019, VBI has already incubated 46 projects in total. It will continue adhering to the concept of scale-up investment with an estimated total number of incubated companies of over 100 in the next year. During the previous year, VBI's incubated projects made good progress with R&D and financing. Among which, companies including QurALis Corporation, QureBio, DTx Pharma, VivaVision, etc. successfully completed financing, and Anji Pharmaceuticals, Dogma Therapeutics, ABM Therapeutics and Arthrosi Therapeutics made steady progress with clinical trials.
In the future, VBI will continue organizing Demo Day events regularly, aiming to provide founders of the incubated companies with a better platform for financing, communication and exhibition, and further enhance the innovative biopharmaceutical investment ecosystem which centers on Viva Biotech and creating more values for companies on the platform, endeavoring to realize a win-win circumstance.
Viva Biotech's mission is to become a cradle for innovative biotechnology companies around the world. Viva Biotech has developed a scalable business model combing the conventional cash-for-service (CFS) model and its unique equity-for-service (EFS) model. Under the CFS model, the Group provides structure-based drug discovery services to its biotechnology and pharmaceutical customers worldwide for their pre-clinical stage innovative drug development, covering the full spectrum of the customers' needs for early stage drug discovery, including target protein expression and structure research, hit screening, lead optimization and drug candidate determination. Viva Biotech also provides drug discovery and incubation services to biotechnology start-up companies with high potential under its EFS model. As of December 31, 2019, Viva Biotech had provided drug discovery services to 438 biotechnology and pharmaceutical customers worldwide, worked on over 1,200 independent drug targets, delivered over 13,700 independent protein structures, and incubated a total of 46 early stage R&D projects.
Viva BioInnovator ("VBI") is the core department of Viva Biotech's incubation and EFS business. VBI is solely dedicated to the exploration, investment and service for valuable biopharmaceutical innovation concepts in various indication fields worldwide, and high potential startups with innovative solutions to unmet clinical needs. Leveraging Viva Biotech's rich experience and technical advantage in the field of novel drug R&D, VBI will provide investment and gradually optimize post-investment value-added services including R&D, site and logistic support, industrial connection and investment and financing according to various demand in different stages of drug discovery and company development, to accelerate the transformation from 0 to 1 and commercialization of novel drug R&D.
