Serum-free media are critical ingredients in biomedicine production and are used in various applications, including vaccine manufacturing, antibody and recombinant protein production, cell and gene therapy, and primary cell culture.
Zhuhai Kairui Biotech, Ltd (Chinese：珠海恺瑞生物科技有限公司), a serum-free cell culture medium developer, recently closed a Series A financing round worth nearly CNY 100 million (USD 13.77 million). This funding round was co-invested by Juke Investment (Chinese：钜科投资), Yanghe Investment (Chinese：阳和投资), Gree Industrial Investment (Chinese：格力产投), Jet Bio-Filtration (Chinese：洁特生物) and Dingsheng Yunchuang Technology (Chinese：鼎盛云创).
The company will develop a comprehensive serum-free cell culture reagents system and provide CRO services for new antibody drugs and cell therapy products based on the new 6,000-square-meter R&D laboratory and GMP workshop.
Since its establishment in 2014, Zhuhai Kairui Biotech, Ltd has focused on researching, developing, and manufacturing serum-free media for mammalian cell cultures. Currently, the company has an expanded list of cell culture media and related products for various applications in the fields of recombinant protein production, vaccine manufacturing, primary cell culture research, and stem cell and immune cell therapeutic applications.
It has been reported that the Chinese cell culture medium market has grown from CNY 610 million in 2017 to CNY 2.63 billion in 2021, with the serum-free culture medium market growing significantly. However, 90% of the global cell medium market was monopolized by three US enterprises: Thermo Fisher, Merck and GE Health. Due to the high cost of imported serum-free media, the extended supply cycle and the difficulty in customization, there is an urgent need for domestic media replacement.
In recent years, attracted by the promising market prospects, many enterprises have entered the field of serum-free cell medium, including OPM Biosciences (Chinese：奥浦迈生物), JSBio (Chinese：健顺生物), Sunshine Guojian (Chinese：三生国健).