Legend Bio founder's cell-therapy startup raises ¥140M to cut CAR-T costs
What's the deal? Wondercel Therapeutics (Shenzhen Bay Island Cell), the biotech founded by Fan XiaohuDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — former founder and chief scientist of Legend Biotech — has raised 140,000,000 CNY (about $20.6 million) in a Series A round. Cowin CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → led the round, with Oriental Fortune CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → participating.
What's the endgame? The company is developing an allogeneic, "off-the-shelf" universal CAR-T therapy that avoids gene editing. Fan says the approach could enable standardised, large-scale production at a cost close to ordinary biologic drugs.
Why now? The round follows early human data. At the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, the company disclosed results from its CD19 CAR-T therapy for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma; its earliest low-dose patient has stayed in complete remission for roughly 14 months. The new capital funds upcoming clinical trials.
The context: First-generation autologous CAR-T therapies, such as Legend's cilta-cel — the only CAR-T with sales nearing $2 billion — are custom-made from a patient's own T cells. That process is slow and expensive, pushing prices to around 1,000,000 CNY per dose, out of reach for most patients.
How it works: Rather than gene editing, which carries off-target risks and limits yield, the company uses proprietary protein-degradation technology to clear the TCR-CD3 complex that triggers immune rejection. Fan says this could lift output to 3,000 doses per batch and cut costs.
What could go wrong? The technology is unproven at scale. One high-dose patient showed strong cell expansion but developed serious grade 3 cytokine release syndrome, and the company says it must still refine its treatment protocol to balance efficacy and safety.
The signal: China's innovative-drug funding remains tight, with capital flowing toward AI and, within cell therapy, toward in-vivo CAR-T — a sub-sector that drew over 2 billion CNY in disclosed primary-market funding in the first half of the year. Backing a non-editing approach signals investor appetite for lower-cost, more accessible cell therapies even as the broader sector reprices.
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Image credit: Generated with Gemini
