Participated · Series A · Aug 2023

Atantares develops molecular chips that use integrated circuits and semiconductor technologies to drive biotechnology applications. Its first application is high-throughput DNA synthesis, aiming to reduce the cost of DNA synthesis using CMOS chip-based gene synthesis. The company says its first-generation short-chain CMOS chips have been taped out. It has also strategically pursued an enzymatic biological method as a complementary path and is developing controllable strategies to improve enzyme efficiency and automation for enzymatic synthesis. Atantares intends to use recently raised funds for R&D, service operations, and capacity expansion. The company was founded in 2021 and is pursuing both semiconductor and enzymatic approaches in parallel.

Participated · Series B · Aug 2022

Porton Advanced Solutions is a Suzhou, China-based CDMO dedicated to gene and cell therapy (GCT) development and manufacturing. The company provides an integrated GCT CDMO platform covering plasmids, cell therapy, gene therapy, oncolytic virus, nucleic acid therapy and microbial vectors used for gene therapy. It currently operates a 40,000 sqft R&D and GMP production facility that has been in operation for over two years and has delivered plasmids, viruses and cell batches to sponsors. Porton Advanced plans to bring a 160,000 sqft commercial production facility online in late 2022/early 2023, bringing total PD, AD and GMP manufacturing to over 200,000 sqft. The firm intends to scale capacity to support AAV, oncolytic virus and mRNA CDMO capabilities, and will deploy proceeds to expand into different markets, invest in core manufacturing infrastructure and build global commercial operations. The company is led by CEO Dr. Wang Yangzhou.

Participated · Series D · Jul 2021

Vedanta's lead program, VE303, is an orally administered live biotherapeutic product comprising a defined consortium of eight bacterial strains, developed to prevent recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection. VE303 is produced from pure, clonal bacterial cell banks to yield a standardized powdered drug product and has received FDA Orphan Drug designation (2017) and Fast Track designation (2023). The registrational Phase 3 RESTORATiVE303 trial is randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled with a 2:1 randomization and a primary endpoint of CDI recurrence rate at Week 8. RESTORATiVE303 is enrolling across more than 150 sites in about 20 countries, has passed a DMC interim analysis recommending continuation, and is expected to complete enrollment in H2 2026 with topline data in H1 2027. Vedanta is funding the trial through the recent $60M financing package and supplemental BARDA funding. The company intends the RESTORATiVE303 study to form the basis for a Biologics License Application to the U.S. FDA.