Recently, LBP announced an exclusive investment of tens of millions (yuan) in ThunderBio Innovation Limited (hereinafter referred to as "ThunderBio"). After this strategic investment, LBP will form a deep strategic cooperation with ThunderBio in the field of digital PCR, including the R&D, production and sales promotion of digital PCR related products. Through this strategic investment, LBP will further enrich its molecular diagnosis platform, and deepen the business deployment in the field of tumor screening and precision diagnosis, to improve its core competitiveness.
Cai Xinglun, LBP's Head of Strategy and Investment Department and Secretary of the Board of Directors, and Xu Xiaonan, the founder of ThunderBio, signed a contract on behalf of both parties
LBP is deploying digital PCR technology
LBP focuses on tumor screening and precision diagnosis. The Company's existing molecular diagnostic technology platforms include PCR and FISH, and this strategic investment in ThunderBio is an important exploration and layout in the field of digital PCR. In the future, the Company will further enrich its product lines and strengthen the accumulation of technological innovation in the field of molecular diagnostics.
The core technology of ThunderBio is droplet-based microfluidics. Droplet-based microfluidics rapidly divides the reaction system into micron-level microdroplets, with independent reactions in each microdroplet, and integrates the basic operations of biochemical tests such as sample reaction, preparation, separation and testing onto the chip, which greatly improves the throughput and sensitivity of reactions. Based on the droplet microfluidics, ThunderBio has developed three platforms: digital PCR, single cell sequencing and high throughput screening.
As a "third generation PCR technology", digital PCR has characteristics such as high sensitivity and absolute quantification compared with general PCR, and is widely used in tumor liquid biopsy, reproductive genetics, pathogenic microorganism testing and other fields. Over years of development, it is widely accepted as a common and effective life science research tool and has started to enter the clinical market, and international giants are also deploying it one after another.
Xu Xiaonan, Founder of ThunderBio:
As a next-generation nucleic acid testing technology, digital PCR is becoming a key technology in the field of precision medicine based on its analytical characteristics of absolute quantification. With the gradual maturation of academia and industry in recent years, digital PCR technology has been widely validated in clinical fields such as liquid biopsy, pathogenic microorganism testing, early cancer screening, and non-invasive prenatal testing, and has also shown great application prospects in industrial fields such as biosimilar R&D process and drug residue quality control. ThunderBio is devoted to promoting the application of droplet-based microfluidics in clinical medicine and biopharmaceuticals. This cooperation with LBP not only strengthens the clinical business, but also enables concerted efforts to complete the overall closed loop from detection to concomitant medication, so that precision medicine can be truly implemented in the clinical practice.
Cai Xinglunm, Head of Strategy and Investment Department of LBP and Secretary of the Board of Directors:
Digital PCR is a new-generation PCR technology. Compared with fluorescent quantitative PCR (qPCR), digital PCR has the advantages of high sensitivity, precision and rapidity, high throughput, and diverse test samples. As one of the emerging technologies for auxiliary cancer diagnosis, digital PCR meets the market demand of early tumor screening, auxiliary diagnosis, companion diagnostics and tumor MRD, which is also the strategic direction of LBP to focus on tumor screening and precision diagnosis for many years and extend the layout in the future. The digital PCR technology developed by ThunderBio based on the underlying technology of droplet-based microfluidics has the advantages of high throughput, low cost and traceability. We are very optimistic about this strategic cooperation and the future market space of digital PCR.
About ThunderBio
Incubated in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, ThunderBio was co-founded by several returnee PhDs in 2018. It has R&D centers in Shenzhen, Jiaxing and Hong Kong, with a R&D team of nearly 100 persons, and a production base integrating microfluidic chip, instrument and reagent production. The Company focuses on the application of droplet-based microfluidics in the field of precision medicine and biopharmaceuticals, and is committed to becoming a complete solution provider integrating the R&D and production of microfluidic chips, instruments, and reagents. The Company independently develops and produces technical platforms: digital PCR system, single cell omics and high throughput screening system, which are used in the cancer research, early cancer screening, targeted therapy, non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, quantitative virus detection, high throughput drug and antibody screening, and other fields.
