China Zhongji Investment participates in a new round of financing for "Kikai Life", supporting the development of structural heart disease treatment.
Recently, China Zhongji Investment completed a Pre-C round equity investment in Koka (Nantong) Life Science Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Koka Life"). This round of financing amounted to 350 million RMB, led by BOCG Lanhai and Shanghai Free Trade Zone Fund, with China Zhongji Investment, Huayi Capital, Zhang Kehe Run Fund, Xingzheng Capital, Nantong Chan Kong, Jiu Zhou Tong (Chu Chang Investment) and Shenzhen Major Industry Investment Fund participating, and existing shareholder Guozhong Capital continuing to add investment. The funds raised in this round will be used to accelerate the progress of the existing large-scale clinical trial project for heart valves, continuous investment in valve clinical application and verification clinical trials, the promotion of R&D of subsequent innovative product pipelines, and potential strategic cooperation.
Koka Life is an innovative enterprise in China engaged in the research and development of structural heart disease treatment products. The company has developed a number of cardiovascular interventional products with independent intellectual property rights. Currently, many of its products have been finalized and undergone multiple rounds of animal experiments, preliminarily verifying the safety and effectiveness of the products. Among them, the company's first interventional product, the mitral valve repair system LIFECLIP®, entered the formal registration clinical trial phase in July this year. Targeting patients with mitral regurgitation who are at high risk for or cannot tolerate surgical procedures, Koka Life has independently developed and created the mitral valve repair system LIFECLIP®, a repair product suitable for domestic patients, based on the edge-to-edge repair principle. This product has currently enrolled multiple clinical patients. Post-operative patients showed significant improvement in the degree of mitral regurgitation, and no complications occurred, preliminarily confirming the clinical safety and efficacy of LIFECLIP®. In terms of product clinical applications, in addition to the successful development and clinical application of LIFECLIP®, Koka's key products, the transfemoral mitral valve repair system KokaClip® and the transfemoral replacement valve KokaValve®, both have unique technological advantages and characteristics. They have passed ethical review and are about to enter the clinical stage. The company also possesses a mitral valve annuloplasty repair technology platform, and the mitral valve annuloplasty production site has been approved by the Zhangjiang Park. The company has a more solid technological foundation and more flexible and diverse R&D methods in product innovation and product portfolio, enabling it to continuously develop more new domestic medical devices to benefit patients with valvular diseases. Valve interventional therapy is another hot track for interventional therapy following the TAVR industry. Because the industry is still in its infancy, the gap between domestic and foreign enterprises is smaller, and the future valve intervention market is expected to see the emergence of leading domestic enterprises, sharing the vast domestic and international markets. The world's first mitral valve intervention product, MitraClip, has been on the market for more than ten years, with four generations of products and over 100,000 patients treated, making it the most widely used mitral valve treatment product. We expect that edge-to-edge repair technology will continue to lead in the short to medium term. Wu Fushun, Partner and Managing Director of China Zhongji Investment, said: "China's medical device industry is in a period of rapid development, with product technology upgrades, import substitution, and internationalization as the key areas for future breakthroughs. We are optimistic about the development of cutting-edge technologies in medical devices. As one of the innovative competitors in the research and development of structural heart disease treatment products in China, Koka Life, with its leading experience and innovation capabilities in the development of mitral valve repair systems, is expected to become one of the leading companies in this field in China. We look forward to the early benefits of the product for patients."
