MagicRNA raises hundreds of millions of yuan in Series B financing to advance world’s first in vivo CAR-T therapy
Recently, Shenzhen MagicRNA Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (or MagicRNA) announced the completion of a Series B financing round of several hundred million yuan. This round was led by a fund under CICC Capital, co-led by Kangjun Capital , with participation from CDB Capital, BOC Asset Management, Suzhou High-tech Financial Holdings, and Guoshun Investment. Existing shareholders including Matrix Partners China, IDG Capital, Nanling Capital, Huatai-Genscript, China Biopharmaceutical (China Biopharmaceutical Leading Fund), and Haiyuan Capital also participated. Chenglin Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor.
The funds will be primarily used for the US and Chinese IND applications for the core pipeline HN2301, global clinical development, and commercial cooperation. In the past year, MagicRNA has efficiently completed three rounds of market-based financing – a nearly 100 million RMB Pre-A+ round led by IDG Capital in August 2025, followed by increased investment from Tencent Investment in December of the same year, and now this Series B round. This pace is rare in the current biotech financing environment.
MagicRNA was founded in December 2021 and aims to accomplish something that is considered extremely difficult: loading mRNA into lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), allowing LNPs to accurately locate CD8-positive T cells in the human body, delivering the mRNA encoding CD19-CAR into them, directly reprogramming the T cells into CAR-T cells in the patient’s body, and then clearing the disease-causing B cells.
The core obstacle this technological approach needs to overcome is the long-standing bottleneck in the field of mRNA – extrahepatic non-APC targeted delivery. Most LNPs are intercepted by the liver after entering the human body. To make them “turn around” and find T cells, they need to be surface-conjugated with humanized anti-CD8 antibody fragments for targeted navigation.
MagicRNA’s EnC-LNP engineered cell-targeted delivery platform has achieved international leadership in this area. In March 2025, MagicRNA officially launched its exploratory clinical study (NCT06801119), becoming the world’s first cell-targeted LNP drug to enter human clinical trials (First-in-human).
Clinical data provided the strongest support for this Series B funding. In September 2025, data from the first five patients with refractory systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) were published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) – this was also the first human validation of in vivo CAR-T based on mRNA-LNP.
At a dose of 4 mg, 6 hours after administration, the CAR positivity rate of peripheral blood CD8+ T cells in some patients reached over 60%, and peripheral B cells were completely cleared and maintained for 7-10 days; the SLEDAI-2000 disease activity scores of all patients decreased at the 3-month follow-up, anti-nucleosome antibodies and anti-dsDNA antibodies decreased rapidly, and complement levels in some patients returned to normal.
In terms of safety, no grade 3 or 4 CRS was observed, no ICANS neurotoxicity events occurred, and no liver, kidney, or hematologic damage occurred.
As of August 2026, HN2301 has enrolled dozens of patients with various autoimmune diseases, and no liver toxicity or grade >2 CRS has been observed at any dose.
Through iterative optimization, the efficacy data of the latest batch of patients has been further improved, with deep clearance of peripheral blood and tissue B cells observed, which has translated into sustained and deep remission in clinical scores. The relevant results were selected for the 2026 ASGCT oral presentation and the 2026 EULAR Highlights.
Since 2025, multinational pharmaceutical companies have been unleashing a wave of mergers and acquisitions with substantial sums of money. Eli Lilly acquired Orna Therapeutics (circular RNA + LNP pathway) for $2.4 billion in February 2026, and then acquired Kelonia Therapeutics (lentiviral pathway) for up to $7 billion in April; AbbVie acquired Capstan Therapeutics (tLNP platform) for up to $2.1 billion in June 2025; BMS acquired Orbital Therapeutics for $1.5 billion; AstraZeneca acquired EsoBiotec for $1 billion; and Kite acquired Interius BioTherapeutics for $350 million. Publicly disclosed major transactions alone indicate that the global value surrounding in vivo CAR-T therapy exceeded $6.5 billion by 2025.
Lentiviral vectors achieve stable and long-term CAR expression through genome integration, making them suitable for severe cases such as hematologic malignancies where sustained efficacy is crucial. However, they come with the risk of insertional mutations and the requirement for long-term follow-up. LNP-mRNA, on the other hand, is a non-integrated transient expression method with no risk of insertional mutations. It supports repeated dosing and flexible dose adjustment, has a wider safety window, and is more suitable for “hit-and-run” treatment scenarios such as autoimmune diseases and minimal residual disease clearance.
MagicRNA follows the LNP-mRNA route used by major global players in this field, including Capstan (acquired by AbbVie for CPTX2309, an anti-CD8 antibody conjugated with LNP to deliver CD19 CAR mRNA), Orna (acquired by Eli Lilly for circular RNA + LNP), and Orbital (acquired by BMS).
Source: MagicRNA Biotechnology Co. | Top Image: Lipid Nanoparticles 3D Model, RenderHub
