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CN Bio has raised a $21 million investment in the first close of its Series B fundraising round. The funding has been secured from several new investors; including $10 million from Bayland Capital, and $5.5 million from founding shareholder, CN Innovations Holdings Ltd. The investment will be used to accelerate the Company’s expanding product portfolio and to scale the business to support commercial expansion across key global markets.
The global OOC market’s CAGR is estimated at 30.94%. This growth has been accelerated, in part, by the need for biopharmaceutical companies to improve the efficiency and success rate of innovative drug R&D and recent legislative changes, such as the US FDA Modernisation Act 2.0. In response, CN Bio is delivering an ambitious expansion strategy to meet the increasing demand for its PhysioMimix OOC technology and research services, and to provide deeper, clinically-relevant insights into early-stage preclinical drug discovery in a wider range of application areas, whilst reducing reliance on animal models. Over the past year, this has included a series of high-profile appointments to expand the Company’s leadership team in the UK and US, new product launches, and strategic industry collaborations. Notably, in December 2023, it was confirmed that PhysioMimix OOC and its associated NASH ‘in-a-box’ kit provided critical human-relevant compound efficacy data for Inipharm’s INI-822, supporting regulatory approval to initiate clinical testing for metabolic liver disease – a pivotal inflection point in CN Bio’s development, and the broader industry.
With the latest fundraising, CN Bio is well-positioned to continue its global expansion to meet the evolving needs of customers worldwide in key markets including toxicology, drug pharmacology and metabolic diseases. With 80% of clinical failures attributed to efficacy and toxicity issues, often derived from the poor predictiveness of animal and 2D cell culture models, the industry demand for OOC solutions in these areas is growing. By expanding R&D in the space, CN Bio will enhance the depth and breadth of tools and applications available to optimise drug discovery and development workflows, enabling researchers to generate data with greater predictability, lower risks of late-stage failures, and accelerate time-to-market for a wide-range of novel therapeutics.