On July 23rd, 20021,Cytek Biosciences, a provider of cell analysis instruments and solutions headquartered in Silicon Valley, USA, successfully logged on NASDAQ (code: CTKB). Most people think that the return period of medical investment is long. However, it took only six years for Cytek to grow from two founders to a company with an annual income of over 100 million US dollars and a market value of several billion US dollars. Dr. Yu Fang, the founding partner of Herbal Capital, is affectionately called "Cytek Mom", because since the establishment of Cytek, Herbal Capital has made several rounds of investment in the company, which has benefited a lot.
The recent hot news analyzes some key words of Cytek's success, including "fast-growing market segment business", "technology that causes industry changes" and "the development path of innovative enterprises driven by technology like textbooks". IT is worth noting that Cytek has created a new generation of subversive products through the clever intersection of IT (information) technology and BT (biology) technology-applying the full spectrum technology of optical communication to flow cytometry, which has changed the traditional analysis method that requires filters.
The two founders of Cytek are Yan Ming, a veteran of BD, a flow cytometer manufacturer, and Jiang Wenbin, an IT communication entrepreneur. The intersection of technology and the organic combination of cross-industry background teams seem to have become the secret of a new generation of disruptive medical innovation.
As the world's leading professional fund for life sciences and medical care, Herbal Capital divides their investment projects into two categories: "innovative medicine" and "cross-innovation". In addition to Cytek, we also combed several cases of cross-innovation investment in materia medica, such as Wenxin Technology, an instrument company that introduced wearable multi-index heart monitors, Tong Ling Technology that produced medical-grade hearing AIDS based on artificial intelligence and chip technology, and Twist Biosciences, a platform company that realized large-scale DNA synthesis on silicon chips, from which we can get a glimpse of the investment logic of materia medica.
Cytek Biosciences is a leading life science company in the field of flow cytometry. For a long time, flow cytometry has played an important role in immunology, oncology, hematology and translational medicine. However, the traditional flow technology is limited by the spectral overlap of filters, and it is difficult to detect and analyze complex cell samples with more than 20 colors.
In order to increase the number of multi-color signal acquisition channels, Cytek adopts IT/BT (information technology and biotechnology) cross innovation, and introduces optical signal analysis methods such as CWDM technology and APD chip technology in the field of optical fiber communication into the field of flow cytometry, creating a core product-full-spectrum flow cytometry.
Cytek full-spectrum flow cytometry breaks through the tradition and can detect and analyze more than 40 colors in a tube of cell samples, which greatly meets the growing demand of life science research and clinical diagnosis and treatment. It has been widely used in tumor immunity, allergy and autoimmunity, infectious diseases, organ transplantation, blood cell diseases, immunodeficiency and other scenes, and can also be used in antibody conjugates and nano-biological scenes in the future.
The driving force of Cytek's product technology innovation comes from the technical backbone of the company's multidisciplinary background. For example, the company has excellent human resources in laser, computer software, flow control technology, image processing, weak signal processing, biological probe and so on. Dr Jiang Wenbin, CEO of the company, is a successful entrepreneur in the field of optical communication. Dr. Yan Ming, CTO, once worked in the instrument research and development department of BD, a leading flowmeter enterprise, and has more than 20 years of experience in new equipment research and development.
Under the cross-disciplinary collision, the full-spectrum flow cytometer built by Cytek has the advantages of high sensitivity, low cost, stability and easy use. Its technical support scheme covers the hardware, software, systems and reagents of flow cytometry, and its product line continues to be rich and the moat continues to deepen, making it the best choice in the field of high-end multicolor flow in the world. Cytek has become a "dark horse" that subverts the existing market structure on the industry track. At present, Herbal Capital, which has continuously injected capital for six years, is its largest institutional investor shareholder.
Twist Bioscience Company (NASDAQ: TWST) is a synthetic biology and genomics company. By writing DNA into droplets on a silicon wafer, a new method of making synthetic DNA was born.
By adopting strict engineering principles, Twist applies the highly scalable production and processing infrastructure and cross-innovation of semiconductor industry to DNA biosynthesis, which breaks through the bottleneck of traditional technology, makes it possible to produce DNA on a large scale, and ensures the accuracy and quality of DNA synthesis.
The synthesis platform has high requirements for chip manufacturing, droplet, control and feedback, software system and so on. Its research and development spans many professional disciplines and has the highest technical barriers.
The traditional DNA synthesis method uses 96-well plates, and only 1 gene can be synthesized in the same physical space, which limits the application of large-scale DNA synthesis from the aspects of flux, scalability and cost. In contrast, Twist's DNA synthesis platform can synthesize nearly ten thousand genes on a single chip. The platform reduces the reaction volume by 6,543.8+0,000 times and increases the flux by 6,543.8+0,000 times. Therefore, Twist can synthesize more DNA with few reagents, and the synthesis cost of each gene is greatly reduced.
Wenxin technology co., ltd was established on 20 15. The first product is a wearable multi-index heart monitor, which is dedicated to providing accurate, convenient and comprehensive home heart health monitoring solutions.
Wenxin team combined with its own more than ten years of experience in signal processing and electronic engineering research and development, introduced the advanced micro-sensor and digital signal processing technology in the field of automobile sensing into the medical field, and developed a lightweight and portable wearable heart monitoring device-"Wenxin Xiaoyi" smart heart patch. Band-aid-sized products are easy to install and operate, and daily monitoring only takes a few minutes, which is very convenient to use.
"Wen Xiao Xin Yi" is the world's first medical device that combines "heart sound+ECG+wearable". High-tech sensor with patented technology is the first to collect heart sounds and ECG signals synchronously and analyze them comprehensively, which is accurate and fast, more comprehensive than single signal information, and can find problems faster and master heart conditions, such as arrhythmia, cardiac energy storage, valves, myocardium and heart failure.
At present, the product can be used for auxiliary diagnosis and long-term monitoring of various heart diseases, including heart failure, atrial fibrillation and congenital heart disease. The accuracy of auxiliary diagnosis has also been verified by the data of cardiac color Doppler ultrasound in several 3A hospitals. Applicable to a wide range of people, such as people with heart disease or hidden danger of heart disease, the elderly, patients with chronic diseases, sub-healthy and high-stress people, young and middle-aged office workers who care about their own health, etc. The applicable scenarios have also greatly expanded beyond hospitals, communities and families. In the future, Wenxin Technology will expand a series of portable health monitoring devices to support cloud big data services and apply them to people's daily health monitoring.
Tong Ling Science and Technology, founded on 20 18, is a high-tech company focusing on medical listening algorithms and products, and is committed to applying the latest artificial intelligence and Internet acoustic audio technology to the health care field. The company's core product is a new generation of medical-grade hearing AIDS based on artificial intelligence.
Tong Ling's team includes experts in artificial intelligence, Internet, chip technology, audiology, acoustics and speech signal processing. Chris Chen, CEO, has nearly 20 years of experience in IT industry. Mr. Chief Technology Officer was a MOTO mobile phone architect with more than 20 years of experience in voice processing and artificial intelligence technology.
Tong Ling team creatively introduced cloud computing and chip technology into the field of medical hearing AIDS based on their own research and development experience, independently developed a brand-new cloud computing hearing aid algorithm, organically combined high-performance algorithm with low-power chip, and created the first intelligent hearing aid in China that linked the three terminals of "headset+mobile phone+cloud", achieving zero breakthrough in the industry.
After wearing the fashionable true wireless headset hearing aid, the user can carry out accurate fitting on the mobile phone independently, and the sound schemes in various indoor and outdoor scenes are automatically adapted by cloud computing, so that he can listen to the world more comfortably, conveniently, clearly and brightly.
While developing medical hearing AIDS, Tong Ling Science and Technology also applied the algorithm to the mass consumer market, and launched the hearing aid headset scheme and healthy headset scheme with independent intellectual property rights at the earliest in China. You can make headphones have auxiliary listening function, make the conversation clearer, and let everyone get a healthy and personalized listening experience.
In short, the above-mentioned cross-innovative technologies of Cytek Bioscience, Twist Bioscience, Wenxin Technology and Tong Ling Technology have brought more intelligent and convenient product experiences to users, and the interdisciplinary talent team of the company has built barriers for core technology patents. These companies have won the favor of herbal capital by virtue of the joint innovation advantages of software and hardware, laser electricity, chips, sensors and biomedical technologies.
Herbal Capital believes that through the intersection of science and technology, there is an opportunity to create subversive innovative products. People in the same industry are often limited in innovative thinking and may not necessarily understand the technological development of other industries. In the past two decades, there have been many technological breakthroughs and applications in IT industry, materials and nano-science. Some mature technologies can be applied to life sciences, creating a new generation of medical devices, diagnosis and life science tools, subverting the traditional medical industry and better serving human health.