A Hong Kong-based drug discovery and development company has secured fresh capital.
The firm raised $35 million on the heels of its last round, bringing its Series D investment to 95 million dollars. Alex Zhavoronov, the firm's founder and CEO, declined to reveal the company's valuation, but said the new round was oversubscribed.
Prosperity7 is the venture capital arm of Saudi Arabia's oil company. The fund has been looking for opportunities in and around China that can scale around the world.
Prosperity7 seems to be a good fit for Insilico, which operates R&D teams in Hong Kong.
The inspiration for sustainable chemistry came from Prosperity7. Machine learning is used to find potential drug targets. The founder explained that the same technology can be used to find novel and useful molecule for sustainable chemistry.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, sustainable chemistry is a scientific concept that seeks to improve the efficiency with which natural resources are used to meet human needs. It passes the design, manufacture, and use of efficient, effective, safe and more eco-friendly chemical products.
A large diversified asset management firm on the U.S. West Coast is one of the investors from the round.
Zhavoronov invested in the financing.
The founder compared the drug discovery space to the early Semiconductor industry where research was done mostly in the U.S.
Contract research organizations provide support to pharmaceutical or medical device companies in the form of outsourcing. China has become a popular CRO hub for international pharma companies.
The founder wanted to talk about the dual-CEO structure. He promoted Dr. Feng Ren to be his co-CEO, while Zhavoronkov focused on the firm's artificial intelligence platform.
Ren has a lot of proprietary data that we use to train artificial intelligence. The tech can be used internally for drug discovery and then exported to other industries.
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