CM Venture Capital has recently completed its investment in Suzhou Beaver Bio-engineering (BEAVER Bio) the leading home-grown brand for bio-nanomagnetic beads in China. Beaver Bio supplies the global market from its industrial base in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, China. The B round of financing that CM Venture Capital Fund III lead will mainly be used to further increase the mass production capacity of the 3rd-Gen functional nano-magnetic beads, while concurrently develop the 4th-Gen beads.
Suzhou Beaver Bio, established in 2011, is one of the earliest Chinese domestic companies engaged in the development of bio-nano magnetic bead technology and products. The company participated in formulating China’s industry standards for magnetic bead-based nucleic acid extraction kits, as well as the international standards for magnetic microspheres (ISO/TS19807-2). Beaver’s proprietary biomagnetic beads and related kit products are widely used in immunoluminescence, nucleic acid extraction, cell sorting, and protein purification. The product quality and performance have been well received by first-tier customers in China and globally.
Nano magnetic bead technology is used for automated and high-throughput sample processing, such as high-efficiency extraction of free extracellular nucleic acids. The functionalized bead surfaces capture ultra-micro and trace amounts of biological macromolecules, which are called “chip-level” raw materials in the field of biomedicine. For separation by nanomagnetic beads to work well, the beads must have strong paramagnetism so they can be quickly aggregated in a magnetic field; the nano-particles must have high uniformity to ensure dispersion in buffer liquid without sedimentation; and most importantly the surfaces of nanomagnetic beads must be functionalized with antibodies or DNA single strands to capture target bio-substance, so these products need to be tailor-produced for downstream applications. BEAVER Bio is making a growing portfolio of functionalized beads for the growing base of IVD companies in China.
Dr. Ren Hui, the founder and CEO of Beaver Bio, obtained his Ph.D. in structural biology from Peking University, and did Post-doc at the Biomedical Engineering Center of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. He has 20 years of experience in R&D, manufacturing and sales/marketing in the field of biomedical engineering. Commenting on the company’s name and culture, Dr. Ren explained: “Beavers are engineers in the animal kingdom, and the company’s name Beaver Bio represents “Unity and Cooperation, Dedication and Persistence.”
CM Venture Capital has long focused on the life science field from the perspective of new materials. Based on the huge population base and the continuous improvement of living standards, China’s domestic in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) market is growing into the world’s largest market with an annual growth rate of nearly 20%. The biomagnetic beads are closely integrated with the detection platform, so more than 90% of China’s biomagnetic beads along with equipment come from overseas brands concurrently. However, as China’s domestic testing equipment manufacturers grow, more and more testing products are made for China’s growing domestic market, ushering in market opportunities for domestic nanomagnetic bead makers. Dr. Zhou Min, managing partner of CM Venture Capital, said: “We are optimistic about the development trend and room for growth of the IVD industry in China. As a leading domestic supplier of upstream core material, Beaver Bio will benefit from the vigorous development of the local IVD industry, as well as the localization trend of international brands. At the same time, as Beaver Bio enriches its product line and develops its 4th Gen production technology that will drastically improve performance and significantly reduce cost of the beads, we believe Beaver products will capture market share in the global market. We expect Beaver Bio to eventually become an international first-tier brand in the field of biomagnetic beads.
