Focusing on the research and development of First-in-Class innovative drugs, "Qingyun Ruijing" uses the underlying technology of life science MicroED to solve the problem of new drug discovery

 

The founding team of "Qingyun Ruijing" comes from the invention team of MicroED technology at Stockholm University, Sweden. This technology was selected as one of the top ten global technological breakthrough technologies of Science magazine in 2018. By building the world's first drug discovery platform with MicroED technology as the core, Qingyun Ruijing finds effective drug molecules for many currently difficult targets, and empowers innovative drug companies in China and the world.

The biomedical industry is a typical technology-driven industry. A series of underlying technologies represented by second-generation gene sequencing and cryo-electron microscopy have been used as transformative forces to change the overall pattern of the biomedical field. In recent years, a large number of emerging companies in the biopharmaceutical field have emerged in China, but most of them are based on mature technologies in the application field, and less attention is paid to the most cutting-edge emerging underlying technologies.

The recent exposure to krypton 36 " Yun Shui Jing " (ReadCrystal) is the one based on the most cutting-edge technology MicroED structural analysis combined with artificial intelligence drug screening technology for innovative drug research and development to provide structural analysis and high-tech bio-pharmaceutical drug discovery business services.

Core Technology

"Structure determines properties" is a well-known conclusion in the field of biochemistry, so the unknown structure has become the Achilles' heel that restricts the development of many "First-in-class" drug pipelines. Traditional structure analysis mostly uses single crystal X-ray diffraction technology. However, this technique cannot be applied to many proteins that are difficult to crystallize. Take the GPCR protein family with great drug value as an example. At present, only 25% of the protein targets have corresponding drugs. One major reason is that it is difficult to complete the structural analysis, which leads to the problem of not being able to find effective drugs for many diseases and the high cost of drug development. It is also relatively long, often taking months to years.

Technical MicroED substituted by electron beam X-ray structure of the drug, protein structure, protein - eutectic structure of the ligand complex parsing the desired crystal size cultured 100,000 cubic meters from a conventional X-ray crystallography art microns decreased 1 Ten million times, only 0.001 cubic microns is needed, which reduces the time for crystal cultivation and structure analysis to one tenth of the original, and increases the success rate to more than twice, exponentially improving the structure analysis ability. Compared with the recently popular cryo-electron microscopy technology (single particle method), MicroED also has the comparative advantage of being able to achieve higher resolution and obtain key details.

As an important underlying technology, MicroED expected in drug discovery process such polycyclic section play a crucial role, including the structural analysis of the target discovery and validation, CADD, the AI drug screening, lead compound was gifted Chemistry, crystal type screening, etc.

Picture from Pixabay

The "Drug Discovery Platform Based on MicroED Technology" developed by "Qingyun Ruijing" is composed of MicroED platform, drug screening platform and AI computing platform. It can make full use of the structure analysis capabilities of MicroED technology, provide a large amount of high-quality data, and combine experiments and calculations. The advantages of the company have helped to overcome important targets that are currently difficult to make drugs, develop First-in-Class innovative drugs, and greatly reduce the development cycle and cost. At the same time, "Qingyun Ruijing" is currently the only company in the world that has established a drug discovery platform with MicroED technology as its core .

Founding team

"Yun Shui Jing" founding team from Stockholm University team invented MicroED technology , the technology named Science magazine 2018 annual world's top ten scientific breakthrough technology . Team members have published papers in a series of world top scientific journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, etc. as the first author and corresponding author.

The founder and CEO of the company, Dr. Leifeng Liu, graduated from Stockholm University, under the tutelage of Professor Xiaodong Zou, the pioneer of MicroED technology (a member of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Review Committee, and a dual academician of the Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering). After returning to China in 2018, Dr. Leifeng Liu became an assistant professor at Southern University of Science and Technology. He resigned from SUSTech at the end of 2019 and founded Qingyun Ruijing. Professor Junliang Sun, the chief scientist and co-founder of "Qingyun Ruijing", teaches at Peking University. He is the secretary-general of the Chinese Society of Crystallography and a world-renowned expert in the field of MicroED. He has published more than 100 articles in Nature, Science and other journals as the first author and corresponding author. Thesis; Chief Scientist and Co-founder Professor Lei Xiaoguang also teaches at Peking University. He is the Chief Scientist of the National Outstanding Youth, Ten Thousand Talents Program, Ministry of Science and Technology 973, 863, and a well-known expert in the field of innovative drug research and development. He is published in Cell, Nature, Science and other journals. More than 100 papers have been published, and 15 innovative drug invention patents have been authorized. At present, three "First-in-class" drug candidates have been developed, and they are about to enter clinical trials.

Compared with start-up companies with an industrial background, "Qingyun Ruijing", as a high-tech biomedical company with academic experts as the core, can quickly apply and continuously develop the most cutting-edge technologies in the field , and has a higher technological advancement. Advantages and barriers.

Prior to this, "Qingyun Ruijing" has received tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing from Jiuhe Venture Capital. "Qingyun Ruijing" founder and CEO Dr. Leifeng Liu told 36Kr that this round of funds will be used for the construction of the company's MicroED laboratory, protein expression transformation laboratory and drug screening laboratory, as well as R&D and market expansion expenses.

Note: According to the FDA definition, a drug granted First-in-class qualification refers to a drug that uses a new and unique mechanism of action to treat a certain disease. According to incomplete statistics, only about 30% of new drugs approved by the FDA in the 20 years from 1999 to 2018 have obtained this qualification certification.