Arterial Network was the first to learn that recently, Shanghai Hanhong Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Hanhong Technology") completed nearly 100 million yuan in Series A financingThis round of financing was led by Shengshan Capital and followed by Jinshui Lake**. This round of financing will be mainly used for the construction of production bases, increasing R&D investment and replenishing working capital. Previously, Hanhong Technology has successively completed seed round and angel round financing.
Founded in 2003, Hanhong Technology has been working in the field of non-natural amino acid industry and biocatalysis for more than 20 years, accumulating rich industry experience. At present, the core products produced by the company are unnatural amino acids, protective amino acids, amino acid derivatives, peptides and peptidomimetic drug intermediates, providing high-quality products and services for more than 3,000 new drug R&D and drug production companies at home and abroad.
Focus on the industrial chain of unnatural amino acidsIt has a low-cost competitive advantage
Unnatural amino acids mainly refer to those amino acids that are not encoded by the genetic code and do not participate in protein synthesis, and have important uses in various fields such as medicine and pesticides. With the research and development of innovative drugs, chiral drugs, peptidomimetic drugs and peptide drugs derived from unnatural amino acids are being used on an increasing scale in the pharmaceutical field. According to QYRESEARCH's "China Unnatural Amino Acid Market Report 2023-2029", it is expected that the size of China's unnatural amino acid market will reach 18 in 2029$900 million, with a compound annual growth rate of 15%。
According to Frost &Sullivan data, the global peptide drug market will grow from $62.8 billion to $96 billion in 2025, and the domestic peptide drug market will grow from $8.5 billion in 2020 to $18.2 billion in 2025, with huge market potential. Among them, GLP-1 metabolic diseases have ushered in explosive growth, and its market size is expected to increase to 28.2 billion US dollars in 2025. The continuous growth of the peptide drug market will drive the rapid development of upstream peptide raw materials, protective amino acids, synthetic reagents and other industries.
The traditional industrial production process of non-natural amino acids is mainly chemical method, including chemical fractionation method, asymmetric transformation method and chiral synthesis method, chemical method has many shortcomings in synthesis side reactions, low chiral content and low utilization rate of ineffective enantiomers, etc., the new technology of biocatalysis to produce non-natural amino acids developed by Hanhong Technology has effectively reduced the production cost, and the chiral content of the product has reached 99More than 9%, the emission of three wastes in production has been greatly reduced, and the safety risk has been greatly reduced. In 2013, its biocatalytic production of non-natural amino acids project technology won the first prize of Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award, in 2015, the company's biocatalysis project technology was identified as "international advanced level" by the scientific and technological achievements of Yancheng Science and Technology Bureau, and in 2016, it undertook the transformation project of major scientific and technological achievements in Jiangsu Province.
At present, Hanhong Technology can produce more than 3,000 kinds of unnatural amino acids and protect nearly 10,000 kinds of amino acids. Among them, L-tert-leucine, L-norvaline, R-3-aminobutyric acid, D-serine, D-phenylalanine, D-proline and other varieties are in the leading position in the industry, and are widely used in the production of hypertension drugs, diabetes drugs, antiviral drugs, and peptide drugs. The company's BOC-protective amino acids and FMOC-protective amino acids are widely used in the production of peptide drugs and peptidomimetic drugs, and with the rapid development of the type 2 diabetes ** drugs GLP-1 semaglutide and tirpatide, the company's production of protective amino acids is also increasing rapidly.
It has three R&D technology platformsTwo production bases for intermediates and APIs were built
At present, Hanhong Technology has built two R&D centers, with synthetic biology technology platform, chiral chemistry technology platform and green chemistry technology platform, with a total area of 3,000 square meters of R&D laboratories and more than 100 regular R&D projects within the company every year.
At present, the company has mastered the industrial production and application technology of nearly 20 kinds of enzymes, including leucine dehydrogenase, isopropanol dehydrogenase, amino acid decarboxylase, aminoacylase, penicillin acylase, nitrile hydratase, nitrile hydrolase, etc.
The chiral chemistry technology platform includes chiral reagent production technology, chiral asymmetric synthesis technology and chiral resolution technology. The platform has many patents and has achieved industrialized production, and the technology of tartaric acid series and mandelic acid series of dissociators occupies a leading position in the industry.
The green chemistry technology platform has developed more than 1,000 green synthesis technologies for organic reagents and more than 20 new APIs and intermediates.
Relying on the company's core technology platform, Hanhong Technology provides various molecular building blocks, pharmaceutical intermediates and API products from the drug discovery stage to the marketing stage. Focusing on the ability of "scale-up" in product development, "we hope to focus on the vertical development of drug molecular building blocks, and further develop into scalable intermediates or APIs through early intervention in customer needs." Ma Shizhong, chairman & general manager of Hanhong Technology, said.
Courtesy of Hanhong Biotech.
In terms of production capacity, Hanhong Technology has built two production bases in Liaocheng, Shandong Province and Lanzhou, Gansu Province, covering a total area of more than 100 acres, with an annual output of 1,000 tons of APIs and pharmaceutical intermediates industrialization capacity. At the same time, Hanhong Technology is actively preparing for a CDMO base for pharmaceutical intermediates and APIs covering an area of nearly 200 acres, further expanding the production capacity of amino acid derivatives, and promoting the implementation of peptidomimetic APIs and peptide APIs projects.
For this round of financing,Mr. Ma Shizhong, Chairman & General Manager of Hanhong TechnologyHe said that after this round of financing, Hanhong will increase its investment in R&D platforms to enhance the company's innovation capabilities in basic application fields such as green synthesis, genetic engineering, biocatalysis, fermentation engineering, biochemical separation engineering, and chiral chemistry. And further increase the investment in the production line, further enhance the large-scale production capacity, so as to realize the integration of drug molecular building blocks, pharmaceutical intermediates, and APIs.
Dr. Hao Cheng, Partner of Shengshan CapitalThe team has been deeply involved in the non-natural amino acid industry chain for more than 20 years using synthetic biology technology, and has accumulated rich experience from small-scale scale to scale-up. We are very pleased to lead this round of financing, and we hope that the company will continue to make steady progress under the leadership of Mr. Ma, and at the same time seize market opportunities, actively expand overseas markets, and become an international leading enterprise as soon as possible."
Mr. Xie Jianchao, Investment Director of Jinshui Lake**Said: Hanhong Technology has been deeply involved in non-natural amino acids for many years, and the team has accumulated rich experience in the pharmaceutical intermediates industry, and has solid synthetic biology and chemical synthesis development capabilities and engineering scale-up capabilities. Unnatural amino acids have broad application prospects in the field of new drug synthesis and peptide drugs, and we are optimistic about the business opportunities of this pharmaceutical intermediates segment. We are very pleased to be able to reach a cooperation with Hanhong Technology, and look forward to the company to provide more competitive non-natural amino acid and derivative products to the market in the future.