At the beginning of the year of rabbit on January 9, 2023, METiS held the housewarming ceremony at Haiwei Center (Binjiang,Hangzhou) where its new office site located. More than 50 invited guests gathered at the venue, including government officers, investors and partners. Ms. She Jian, Deputy Head of Binjiang District, Mr. Wu Yibo, representative of investors, and Dr. Tang Qiusong, director of Roche Accelerator(China), delivered electric speeches.The newly-built site covers about 5,700 square meters, of which 3,000 square meters are laboratories, including a 1,500 square meter biological laboratory with class C and D clean rooms, which will enable the design, synthesis, purification of mRNA, LNP manufacturing process development, high-throughput cell efficacy evaluation, etc. The 1,500 square meter chemistry laboratory encompasses high-throughput formulation equipment, multi-dosage small molecule new drug development equipment, analysis laboratory, etc., which can be leveraged to achieve the R&D of small molecule new drug formulation and process development, analytical method development and validation of small molecule & mRNA drug, and it also paves the road for the end-to-end preclinical development capability of small molecule and mRNA drugs.
She Jian, deputy head of Binjiang District, said, "As a strategic emerging industry that Hangzhou government strives to forge, biomedicine has been recognized as imperative. Today, some young enterprises like METiS Pharmaceutical has brought new momentum to China and even the world's biomedicine. We hope that in the future, METiS can get the utmost out of the advantages of technology platform and talent platform, and collaborate with pharmaceutical enterprises in Hangzhou to bolster the pharmaceutical industry in Hangzhou to be bigger and stronger. The district government will also continue to propell the development of enterprises and provide assistance within its capacity."
Dr. Tang Qiusong, director of Roche Accelerator(China), said," The fruitful collaboration between China Roche Accelerator and METiS Pharmaceutical has proved that the cooperation and exchanges between emerging companies and large pharmaceutical companies can facilitate the advancement of research and development projects, which shed light on the significant value of business cooperation model. Roche sincerely hopes that METiS will expedite its development of the collaborated ‘delivery system project’ for a big leap into the rosy bio-ocean."
Caida Lai, Ph.D., co-founder &CEO of METiS, said, " METiS has been pushing the envelope for years, and we have turned the tide of technology in 2022. Hundreds of LNP with proprietary right and breakthrough technology are generated from our cutting-edge AiLNP delivery Platform, which already created billion dollars of high-net-worth value. And we are looking forward to some more massive collaborations. We have successfully developed multi-organ targeted delivery, such as liver, lung, CNS and tumor tissues, and achieved long-term release in local site. These technological breakthroughs open huge opportunities for unmet clinical needs of human beings such as cancer and neurological diseases."
In 2022, we upgraded from a technology platform to a product platform. We are developing new modality formulations and a number of breakthrough small molecule reformulations benefiting from AiTEM platform’s technology. MTS004 is expected to start phase III in the first half of this year. MTS004 can treat Pseudobulbar affect, which affects millions of cerebral stroke patients, Parkinson patients and other patients in China. METiS will bring the first therapeutic drug for this indication in China to meet the huge clinical demand. In addition, we have generated billion dollars value in pipeline by developing blockbuster drugs in some complex formulations, the worth-mentioning long-acting oral sustained-release that address critical pain points, such gastrointestinal adverse reactions, toxicity reduction, and efficacy synergism in multiple tumors and rare diseases."
The "AI Drug Delivery and Discovery" seminar was held in the afternoon. Several R&D execs shared wonderful technologies from the perspective of high-throughput formulation development, long-acting formulation development, LNP design, mRNA design, quantum computing, artificial intelligence AI algorithm and so on. At the same time, homing in on "RNA and gene therapy industry opportunities and challenges, application scenarios, strategy deployment and corner overtaking opportunities", Dr. Caida Lai held a round-table discussion with Guo Xiaodi, Chief scientist and Director of Pharmaceutical Research Institute of Huahai Pharmaceutical, Haijun Yu, Researcher of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yun Yang, co-founder and CFO of Circode Biology, and Wang Kai, Researcher of School of Basic Medical science, Peking University. Universal recognition has been given to the huge development prospect of RNA and gene drugs in the future, as well as the potential of AI enabling RNA, gene drugs R&D and its optimization.
Since its inception, METiS has always been clinical demand-oriented, exploring the path of artificial intelligence-driven drug delivery and drug discovery innovation, and achieving many technological breakthroughs and application expansion. The commissioning of the new site is an great leap in the company's continued exploration and expansion in the field of drug development and delivery. Ring in the new and look to the future. In 2023, METiS will continue to achieve new technological breakthroughs, optimize the technology platform, and strive to advance to the blue ocean of "AI drug delivery and discovery" with the support and company from many others.
