Ruichu Pharma raises several hundred million yuan in Series A

Nanjing Ruichu Pharmaceutical Co Ltd has raised several hundred million yuan in an oversubscribed Series A to push two drug candidates through Phase I trials in China and the United States.

The round drew Cathay Capital, Fosun Health Capital, Efung Capital and Huatai GenScript, healthcare funds with deep industry ties. It is a contrarian bet. Biotech venture funding has turned cautious, and global drug developers are crowded into homogeneous PD-1 and ADC targets. Ruichu is aiming at aging itself.

Two candidates already in Phase I

Proceeds will fund faster clinical development of two core pipelines and expand the company's underlying research platform. RC010 targets respiratory disease and RC017 targets ophthalmic disease. Both have won IND clearance in China and the US and have entered Phase I studies.

Patents point to NAD+ and cell reprogramming

Ruichu's patent filings, recorded by corporate database Tianyancha, sketch the science behind that pitch. On Feb 24 the company published an application titled "Composition and methods of use", now in substantive examination. It covers aging-reprogramming compositions built around inducing factors intended to regulate tissue repair and organ regeneration.

On May 29 Tianyancha logged a second published application, "NAMPT agonist and uses thereof". It protects small-molecule compounds for preventing and treating diseases linked to NAD+ depletion caused by aging or other pathological causes.

NAMPT, or nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase, is the rate-limiting enzyme at the head of the cell's salvage synthesis pathway. Ruichu's agonists are designed to activate that endogenous pathway rather than supply raw substrate, with the aim of repairing mitochondrial function and curbing the cascade of cell aging. The reprogramming patent points to senolytics and senomorphics, frontier strategies in the field.

That molecular work sits far from the NMN and NAD+ oral supplements that dominate public notions of anti-aging, a market that has drawn heavy skepticism over unproven longevity claims.

Why investors are betting on aging

The strategic case rests on a shift in how regulators and researchers treat aging. Modern medicine long viewed Alzheimer's disease, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, age-related macular degeneration and osteoarthritis as separate organ failures, and drugs aimed at single downstream receptors or enzymes repeatedly failed in late-stage trials. Evidence now supports a broad consensus: senescent cells, which stop dividing but keep secreting a senescence-associated secretory phenotype, or SASP, drive chronic sterile inflammation, fibrosis and irreversible organ degeneration across the body.

Ruichu's answer is to target the aging mechanism itself rather than wait for an organ to fail. Three platforms — clearing, activating and reprogramming senescent cells — aim at degenerative diseases with patient populations in the tens of millions and few effective ways to reverse them. That first-in-class route offers investors an option outside China's price wars over existing targets.

A regulatory detour through lung and eye disease

Neither the US FDA nor China's NMPA recognizes physiological aging as a disease indication. No company can file for approval with longer life or rejuvenation as a clinical endpoint. Without a specific disease, mechanism research cannot be commercialized.

The two Phase I candidates were chosen for organ-level disease with clear unmet need and the option of local delivery. RC010 targets respiratory degeneration, including fibrosis mechanisms linked to pulmonary fibrosis, where aging of the alveolar microenvironment drives irreversible scarring. RC017 targets ophthalmic disease such as age-related macular degeneration and can be given by intravitreal injection to act directly on retinal pigment epithelial cells. Local dosing limits the toxicity and off-target risk of systemic administration, while established endpoints — lung function, visual acuity, fundus imaging — support faster approvals in both countries.

The risks ahead

The sector's failure rate is the first obstacle. Unity Biotechnology, a US anti-aging company once backed by Silicon Valley investors and established drugmakers, saw its UBX0101 candidate fail a Phase II osteoarthritis trial on efficacy. Its shares collapsed and it cut staff and programs. Senescent cells also play a part in wound healing, fibrous matrix construction and immune response. Eliminating pathological senescent cells without disrupting the physiological programs needed for normal function and repair is the biological knife-edge for any aging drug in Phase II and III.

Cost and time are the second obstacle. Moving from Phase I safety and tolerability data to large trials that confirm efficacy in complex degenerative disease takes years and escalating spending. Despite industry partners such as Fosun Health Capital on the register, and with exit routes for biotech limited globally, any safety signal before proof-of-concept efficacy data would make follow-on financing extremely difficult.

The patent applications on Tianyancha and the new capital record a push by Chinese scientists into one of the harder corners of global drug research. Whether these young pipelines can cross the efficacy gap that has tripped up peers abroad is a question only blinded clinical data can answer.