Shanghai Langsheng Biotechnology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Legend Capital's co-founded company Innostellar Biotherapeutics, announced that the clinical trial application of its product LX101 injection for the treatment of patients with Rpe65 biallelic mutation-associated inherited retinal degenerations (IRD) was approved by the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) of the National Medical Products Administration of China.Founded in 2020, Innostellar Biotherapeutics is a biopharmaceutical startup company focusing on gene therapy for innovative drug discovery, manufacture, and commercialization. Its core team consists of scientists and professionals from world-renowned institutions and biopharmaceutical companies. Since its establishment, Innostellar Biotherapeutics has been working closely with top-notch clinical scientists from hospitals around China and focusing on urgent needs of patients with genetic diseases and chronic diseases. The company has laid a firm foundation in the proof-of-concept development of a number of pipelines, process technology development, and quality system.
Inherited retinal degeneration (IRD) caused by the Rpe65 gene mutation is a typical rare disease that leads to blindness and has no effective treatment in the past. As a breakthrough technology, gene therapy provides the possibility to compensate or fix defective genes and fundamentally reinstate the normal gene functions. According to the early data of related products abroad, the treatment helped IRD patients in vision improvement and maintained therapeutic qualities for long term.
Dr. Fenghua WANG, CEO of Innostellar Biotherapeutics, said: "This is an important milestone for our company since its founding. LX101 has gradually demonstrated its therapeutic potential since we cooperated with the National Clinical Research Center for Eye Diseases in 2021 to carry out the first IIT clinical research of IRD gene therapy in China. We expect LX101 to benefit more patients with the therapeutic breakthroughs and maximal treatment effects. We also expect gene therapy to provide effective solutions for improving life of people with genetic and chronic diseases.
Innostellar Biotherapeutics was co-founded by Legend Capital and its founding team. As the earliest investor in the company, Legend Capital and the Innostellar team worked together on company structure organization design, strategy decision, and pipeline planning. With constant support to the development of Innostellar Biotherapeutics, Legend Capital has backed the company in its two rounds of financing. Legend Capital has long been committed to systemic investment in the field of innovative medicine. Adhering to the investment philosophy of "Global Vision, Chinese Perspective", Legend Capital is looking for truly internationally competitive technologies and teams to solve the unmet clinical needs; many of its portfolio companies have listed on A-share or H-share successfully, such as Kawin Technology (688687.SH), Innovent Biologics (01801.HK), Harbour BioMed (02142.HK), and Recbio Technology (02179.HK). At the same time, Legend Capital also have made investments in leading companies in the segment like Suzhou Ribo Life Science, Pegbio, Exegenesis Bio, Lynk Pharmaceuticals, and Glubio.