Oricell raises $110M to push liver cancer CAR-T therapy toward global approval
What's the deal? Shanghai-based Oricell Therapeutics has closed a pre-IPO financing round of over $110 million to advance its pipeline of CAR-T cell therapies — a type of cancer immunotherapy — targeting solid tumours.
The round was co-led by Vivo Capital and Qiming Venture Partners, alongside the Beijing Medical and Health Care Industry Investment Fund — managed by Shunxi Private Fund ManagementDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — and an unnamed global healthcare fund.
Proceeds will fund global clinical development, international expansion, and manufacturing scale-up as the company prepares for a public listing.
Why now? Oricell's lead asset, Ori-C101, is a CAR-T therapy targeting GPC3 — a protein overexpressed in liver cancer cells — for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer.
Having completed early-stage trials with promising efficacy and safety data, the programme is now preparing for pivotal trials. If approved, Ori-C101 could become the first CAR-T therapy specifically cleared for HCC globally — a meaningful first-mover position in a large and underserved indication.
The fundraise also supports Oricell's broader pipeline of next-generation approaches including in vivo CAR-T, where the therapy is delivered directly into the body rather than requiring complex cell extraction and manufacturing, as well as secreted and rapid-production CAR-T variants.
What could go wrong? CAR-T has transformed treatment for some blood cancers, but solid tumours — which account for the vast majority of cancer deaths — have proved far harder to crack. Multiple well-funded programmes have failed in this space despite early promise, and Oricell's pivotal trial will be the real test of whether its approach holds up at scale.
Cost and complexity are also structural challenges. Cell therapies are among the most expensive and logistically demanding treatments to manufacture and deliver, and scaling globally without compromising quality is a significant operational hurdle.
The signal: Oricell's raise reflects sustained investor appetite for Chinese biotech companies with credible clinical data and a clear path to global markets. The inclusion of NGS Super and an international sovereign wealth fund alongside Chinese institutional investors signals that this is not purely a domestic story — international capital is seeking exposure to Chinese cell therapy innovation at the pre-IPO stage.
CAR-T for solid tumours remains one of oncology's most competitive and capital-intensive frontiers, and the companies that crack it stand to reshape cancer treatment for the diseases that kill the most people. Oricell is positioning itself as a leading contender — but the clinical bar ahead is high.
Sources:
Oricell Therapeutics
Fierce Biotech
BioSpace
FinSMEs
Third News
J.V.
