Ascend is Cathay Health’s 1^st investment in the UK and 6^th overall since fund launch. It aims to help gene therapy companies translate product ideas into viable clinical programs

May 10, 2023 – Today, Cathay Health announces its investment in Ascend Gene & Cell Therapies (Ascend), a UK-based specialist CDMO (Contract Development & Manufacturing Organization) innovating manufacturing processes to improve quality, potency, safety and cost of gene therapy technologies, enabling wider patient access to these live-saving treatments. In addition to completing its $117.5M Series A from investors including Cathay Health, Abingworth, Petrichor, Monograph Capital, DCVCbio, 4BIO Capital, Deerfield Management, Digitalis Ventures and Ajinomoto Co., Inc., the company announced its official launch as a facilitator for gene therapy companies to help translate product ideas into viable clinical programs.

Ascend marks Cathay Health’s first investment in the UK and sixth investment globally since launch, following Tissium (France/US), Kojin Therapeutics (US), Initiate (US), Moon Surgical (France/US) and Ganymed Robotics (France). The new funding enabled the acquisition of chemical manufacturing and controls (CMC) capabilities and technologies from Freeline Therapeutics GmbH and provides operational runway to build the business. As part of the transaction, Cathay Health Partner Jia-Yi Har joins Ascend as a Board Observer.

Founded in 2021 by Monograph Capital with $15M seed funding, Ascend offers process development, clinical manufacturing, and analytical and regulatory support for biotech companies working in advanced modalities requiring flexible CMC services. Initially focused on high-quality Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors, Ascend brings together a team of approximately 120 cross-functional experts who have already developed processes for a number of AAV products currently under clinical development.

Ascend has an established global footprint with operations headquartered in the UK with GMP production in Potters Bar, North London, platform technology research in the San Francisco Bay Area,  USA, and a specialist process development and analytics team in Munich, Germany.

The company is led by an experienced leadership team, headed by former Chief Operating Officer at Cognate Bioservices (now part of Charles River Laboratories), Chief Executive Officer Mike Stella who brings 30 years of manufacturing expertise. Ascend’s team also includes Chief Financial Officer Wes McConnell who joined from Bavarian Nordic with 20 years in the life science and viral vector-based manufacturing field, Chief Scientific Officer Markus Hörer who began his career in AAV over 30 years ago and brings significant expertise in developing AAV products as well as other viral vector-based therapeutics, and Chief Operating Officer Arjan Roozen who has built and operated a number of ATMP facilities across multiple geographies.

Mike Stella, Chief Executive Officer at Ascend, said: “Ascend is a service provider for biotechnology companies, created by bringing together expert teams with regulatory sophistication who have ‘been-there-done-that’ and who understand that the quality and potency of product is just as important as yield. We believe that creating a therapy that changes lives means improving on what’s come before. We are excited to bring a new approach to the space and thank all our investors for their support. We will continue to refine and flex our model, staying adaptable to meet the needs of the market.”

Tim Funnell, Founding Investor at Monograph Capital, said:  “AAV manufacturing is complex and needs teams that show real expertise and ownership. This led many advanced modality biotech developers to build their own internal CMC capabilities. However, these companies are now finding it difficult to sustain and fully utilise their facilities. Ascend is realigning this market by carving out CMC units from biotech product developers and offering their capabilities as a service to the originator alongside new clients. This is a more efficient structure that consolidates best-of-breed manufacturing methods and will support the next generation of companies who are looking for external CMC partners.”

Hongjie Hu, Co-founder & Managing Partner at Cathay Health, said: “While the gene therapy market is growing rapidly, access to expertise and manufacturing capacity has not kept pace, leading to prohibitive costs and hampering clinical adoption. Ascend is purpose-built to address these challenges by offering end-to-end support for gene therapy developers from design to clinical and commercial stages. We’re excited to be part of this cross-border project and look forward to supporting the team, using our global network to find new biotech clients and strategic partners to fuel growth, with the end goal of making these therapies more universally accessible worldwide.”

About Ascend

At Ascend we aim high. We support our partners to cure the previously incurable by creating the most effective, highest-quality AAV gene therapies possible. But to achieve that, we must be capable of constantly refining and flexing our approach. Operating an efficient, streamlined model, we provide more than just a service. We’re a team of highly skilled individuals who each share a hunger to use their knowledge and experience to help our clients succeed – whether that’s by innovating new techniques, solving unexpected problems, or offering some honest advice. The result? Consistently high quality and low risk for our clients.

Visit www.ascend-gctx.com to find out more.

About Cathay Health

Cathay Health, affiliated to Cathay Capital, is a global fund investing at the convergence of healthcare, life sciences and technology. As a multi-stage venture and growth fund, it backs convergence medicine companies across Europe, North America and Asia whose tech-enabled solutions catalyze groundbreaking advances in medicine. Its global platform brings together startups, established companies and large corporations to fuel cross-border, cross-industry collaboration and growth with direct access to new markets, partners and patients. From the world’s leading life sciences and technology hubs, including San Francisco, New York, London, Cambridge, Paris, Basel and Shanghai, Cathay Health partners with future leaders in the data-driven medicine era that will transform human health and care in all its dimensions.

For more information, please visit us on the web or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @CathayHealth

March 30, 2023 – Inato, the leading technology platform enabling access to inclusive clinical trials, today announced the close of $20 million in Series A2 funding from existing and new investors. The fundraise includes return and lead investor Cathay Innovation, return investor Obvious Ventures, as well as new investors La Maison and Top Harvest Capital.

The new funding will fuel Inato’s continued product innovation, international growth, and hiring of top talent. Inato will advance its diversity product offering to enable sponsors to strategically meet their diversity goals based on new FDA requirements. The company will also invest in oncology-specific innovation to increase access to care where, despite the number of oncology studies increasing at almost twice the pace of any other therapeutic area, enrollment rates remain startlingly low. Inato will also further define and scale its data model to continue to improve matching reliability between community sites and sponsor trials.

Today, 70% of clinical research happens at the same 5% of sites, and only 5% of patients participate in a clinical trial. This lack of patient access causes trial delays and costs to skyrocket, ultimately constraining medical innovation and patient diversity. Only 4% of clinical trials in recent years have used a representative population, impacting a drug’s efficacy and safety.

“At Inato we are reversing this trend by flipping the model and empowering research-experienced community sites to access the right trials for their team and local populations — regardless of who they are or where they live,” said Inato Co-Founder and CEO Kourosh Davarpanah. “This also enables sponsors to partner with a broader range of verified community research sites, decreasing competition, accelerating site activation, and increasing patient access.”

“Our repeat investment in Inato represents our strong conviction in the company’s mission, team, and continued success as an emerging leader and pioneer when it comes to changing the status quo in clinical trial diversity and access,” said Jean-François Cochy, partner at Cathay Innovation. “At Cathay, we strongly believe in supporting the emergence of global leaders in digital health, and Inato is a bright example through its adoption by hospitals in 60 countries and pharmaceutical groups from all regions. Inato also reflects the strength of the Cathay ecosystem with its strong collaboration with our strategic partner Sanofi.”

“At Obvious, we support entrepreneurs solving humanity’s biggest challenges — and Inato is doing just that,” said Rohan Ganesh, partner at Obvious Ventures. “Inato is playing a critical role in enabling clinical research to keep pace with patient diversity and inclusion, along with being really technologically innovative.”

Launched in late 2020, the Inato platform has quickly become a trusted two-sided platform with over 2,500 community research sites that support more than 70 disease areas in more than 60 countries. Inato has formed partnerships with a third of the top 30 pharmaceutical companies to make their medical research more accessible, inclusive, and efficient.

About Inato

Inato makes clinical trials more accessible, inclusive, and efficient for patients, community-based clinical researchers, and pharmaceutical companies across the globe. By enabling community research sites to more efficiently and effectively select the right opportunities for them, Inato is helping bring the right trials to patients — regardless of who they are or where they live. To do this, the Inato platform connects global pharmaceutical companies with a broader range of community research sites, while ensuring reliable high performance through collaborative, evidence-based enrollment planning and ongoing support. For more information, visit Inato.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Cathay Innovation

Cathay Innovation is a global venture capital firm, created in affiliation with Cathay Capital, investing in startups at the center of the digital revolution across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Its global platform unifies technology investment across continents, investors, entrepreneurs and leading corporations to accelerate startup growth with access to new markets, invaluable industry knowledge and introductions to potential partners from the start. As a multistage fund with over $2B assets under management and offices across San Francisco, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore, Cathay Innovation partners with visionary entrepreneurs and startups positively impacting the world through technology. To learn more, please visit www.cathayinnovation.com or follow us on Twitter @Cathayinnov.