Chinese biotechnology company Oricell Therapeutics said Friday it banked more than $110 million in a “pre-IPO” venture funding that will help it advance a portfolio of cell therapies for tough-to-treat solid tumors.
Oricell’s lead program is being tested against advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, an aggressive liver cancer that most frequently occurs in people with chronic organ damage. That therapy, Ori-C101, has already completed early testing in humans and demonstrated what the company claims to be a “best-in-class efficacy and safety profile.”
Most of the cell therapies that have reached market so far are used to treat blood malignancies. Solid tumors have proven trickier foes, however. These tumors often have cells expressing a variety of antigens, making them hard to target with a therapy aimed at only one. They also use a layer of immune-suppressing cells and other molecules as a protective shield against the body’s defenses.
Oricell is relying on multiple approaches to help, among them a kind of “armored” technology that helps cell therapies fight through this immune-weakening barrier. Its lead program is also aimed at a protein, GPC3, that’s highly expressed on cancerous liver cells and largely not on healthy tissue. In a small study presented at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in 2025, the company said six of 10 patients treated with its therapy responded to treatment, and nine achieved disease control.
Oricell’s pipeline includes six other named drug prospects for other solid tumors and blood cancers. One, “OriCAR-017,” is in a Phase 1/2 trial in China for multiple myeloma. Results are expected later this year. Oricell is also working on “in vivo” CAR-T technology, an increasingly popular approach through which immune cells are engineered within a patient’s body.
Ten investors participated in Oricell’s latest venture funding, among them Vivo Capital, Beijing Medical and Health Care Industry Investment Fund and Qiming Venture Partners. The company previously raised a $70 million Series C1 financing in January. Oricell has not disclosed any other information about its plans to go public.
“We are committed to delivering transformative therapies that offer real hope to cancer patients worldwide, positioning Oricell as a dominant force in the global immunotherapy arena,” Huanfeng Yang, Oricell’s CEO, said in a statement.
