Recently, Chinese synbio startup Leadsynbio has continuously completed the financing of round C and round C+ of more than 400 million yuan. The financing will be used to accelerate the commercialization of the existing products of Leadsynbio and promote the expansion of R&D pipelines and the Hunan production base.
Leadsynbio is a high-tech company that changes the production mode of existing chemical and biological products through synthetic biology technology. Its products cover drugs, health products, and agricultural products. The company has a complete synthetic biology technology platform and an R&D team of more than 100 people. It has R&D centers in Suzhou Industrial Park and San Francisco respectively. It has built an industrialization base with an annual production capacity of 5800 tons in Changdejin City, Hunan Province. The base is about to start phase II and phase III expansion projects.
Since its establishment in 2015, Leadsynbio has shown a gratifying growth rate. At present, many products have taken the lead in mass production with the world's first green process, and there are more than 20 new products in its R&D pipeline. Florfenicol is a widely used amide alcohol veterinary antibiotic with a market scale of more than 3 billion yuan. The production of its key intermediate (D-ethyl ester) has the problems of high energy consumption and high three-wastes, resulting in unstable supply and price. The Leadsynbio team has developed an original biological enzyme process and successfully realized large-scale production, overturning the existing production mode of D-ethyl ester. At present, the company has reached the design capacity of 2000 tons/year and is further expanding the capacity. It is also worth mentioning that the biological synthesis of l-glufosinate developed by Leadsynbio is the effective component of the world's second-largest herbicide glufosinate. Its activity is twice that of ordinary glufosinate, and its market scale exceeds 10 billion yuan. At present, l-glufosinate is gradually replacing ordinary glufosinate all over the world. The Leadsynbio biological joint venture has realized the industrialization of l-glufosinate with an annual output of 1000 tons, At present, the production is expanding at full speed to 33000 tons/year.