On August 25, METiS Therapeutics released its interim results for the 2026 fiscal year, with Chairman and CEO Michael Lai attending the company's first post-IPO earnings call the following day.

METiS focuses on AI-driven drug delivery and drug design. In its interim report, the company outlined a three-tier long-term technology roadmap, positioning AI4S (AI for Science) as the overarching industrial direction, Biological AI as the core technological capability, and life sciences-focused Scaling Law to drive continuous advancement of data, models, and experimental systems, ultimately moving toward cell reprogramming.

During the first half, this framework generated RMB 154.3 million in revenue, with RMB 153.6 million coming from collaboration agreements, primarily driven by the out-licensing of MTS-128. This compares to RMB 1.14 million in revenue for the same period last year, a figure that already exceeds the company's full-year 2024 revenue by 47%.

Outside the reporting period, METiS's AI4S external collaborations span three dimensions: global licensing of proprietary assets, out-licensing of delivery technologies, and local deployment of AI platforms at pharmaceutical companies. These three deals monetize the same platform in three distinct forms.

Three Key Partnerships

The largest deal centers on MTS-128, a trispecific T-cell engager developed in-house via the NanoForge platform, with AI driving everything from molecular design to optimization. METiS has exclusively licensed global development, manufacturing, and commercialization rights to Boulevard Bio, a biotech backed by U.S. healthcare investment firm Deerfield, receiving a $20 million upfront payment and eligibility for up to $1.6 billion in development, regulatory, and commercial milestones plus tiered royalties. According to public disclosures, this sets a new record for single-deal overseas licensing of a preclinical TCE program by a Chinese pharmaceutical company.

The second deal involves delivery technology licensing. Launched in 2025, the OpenCGT program opens the AiLNP platform to external partners, with collaborations already established with RuiGene, Jingtong Life, COFCO Joylife, BioThunder AG, Aicogen Therapeutics, and others, covering cell therapy, gene therapy, fibrosis cell programming, and in vivo immunotherapy, with a combined potential transaction value exceeding RMB 6 billion. Among these, BioThunder AG has exercised its option and signed a license agreement covering up to 10 candidate products, with METiS receiving RMB 15 million in exclusivity fees.

The third deal is platform deployment. On August 3, the AiTEM AI-driven formulation innovation platform was locally deployed at Hengrui Pharma for insoluble drug formulation development. Post-period, the company also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Apeloa Pharmaceutical.

R&D Up 48%, Loss Narrows 56%

R&D expenses for the first half reached RMB 172.4 million, up 48.1% year-over-year, driven mainly by share-based payments and increased professional service fees related to priority pipelines. Adjusted net loss narrowed 56.4% to RMB 51.1 million, while loss attributable to owners stood at RMB 153.2 million, a 20.0% improvement.

At period-end, cash, cash equivalents, time deposits, and financial assets measured at fair value through profit or loss totaled RMB 3.025 billion. The debt-to-asset ratio dropped from 19% at the end of 2025 to 9%. Headcount reached 150 employees, up 21 from the prior year, with R&D staff comprising 70% of the workforce.

Some brokerages project the company's adjusted net profit could turn positive by 2027. Lai declined to confirm this timeline, noting that revenue growth currently outpaces R&D growth, and both expanding rapidly can achieve balance. "We will not improve our operating leverage by cutting R&D," he said.

What Exactly Was Licensed Out

The platform being licensed out is called NanoForge.

In May, METiS launched the AiProtein platform and the AARON antibody design agent, covering de novo antibody generation, structure and function prediction, affinity maturation, and developability assessment, with Spearman correlation coefficients exceeding 0.8 across key property prediction metrics. Combined with the earlier AiLNP, AiRNA, and AiTEM platforms, NanoForge's four modules address delivery systems, nucleic acid sequences, protein antibodies, and formulation development respectively.

On the delivery front, four advances were reported during the period.

Cardiac-targeting LNPs achieved over 95% transfection efficiency in delivering reporter gene mRNA to cardiomyocytes in mouse models, and over 50% effective editing in cardiomyocytes when delivering CRISPR mRNA/gRNA, with extremely low off-target editing in non-target organs. These results were selected for an oral presentation on cutting-edge technology breakthroughs at the 2026 CRS Annual Meeting.

In vivo CAR-T actively-targeted LNPs demonstrated delivery efficiency more than three times that of industry-standard controls in both mouse and non-human primate models. A high-throughput DNA barcoding screening platform in non-human primates enables simultaneous quantitative assessment of multi-tissue distribution for dozens of candidate LNPs within a single cynomolgus monkey. A targeted LNP site-specific conjugation platform addresses antibody shedding issues during manufacturing processes and in vivo circulation.

The AiRNA platform trained a deep generative neural network using over 20,000 experimentally validated IRES sequences, completing initial validation rounds, with some generated sequences showing translation regulatory activity surpassing the classic CVB3 IRES.

At the earnings call, Lai emphasized that pharmaceutical companies ultimately pay for results, not just for AI companies, with hard metrics being the success rate and speed from target identification to preclinical candidate compounds. METiS's fastest program achieved PCC in 11 months.

He also noted that the bottleneck in AI pharma has shifted.

Whether AI can generate molecules has been validated over the past few years, and drug discovery efficiency keeps improving. The current challenge is whether these designed molecules can hold up in real biological systems, from animals to humans, from efficacy to safety, and whether a closed data loop can be established.

Pipeline Overview

As of June 30, METiS had over 10 pipeline programs, including 1 Pre-NDA product, 5 clinical application and clinical-stage products, 5 PCC-stage development products, and 2 animal health products.

The most advanced program is MTS-004, an orally disintegrating tablet for pseudobulbar affect, incubated from the AiTEM platform and licensed to Zhejiang Yin'an in September 2025, with a RMB 100 million upfront payment received in December of that year. The licensee has completed Pre-NDA communication and is currently conducting validation manufacturing. Lai stated that Yin'an handles registration, commercialization, and new indication expansion, while METiS primarily manages manufacturing. NDA approval timing "will depend on the actual progress of registration work and the regulatory review process."

Three additional programs are in clinical stages. MTS-201 is an oral TGR5 agonist exploring therapeutic potential in weight management and metabolic diseases, with Phase 1 Part A and Part B completed and Part C initiated. MTS-105 targets GPC3 on hepatocellular carcinoma cell surfaces, with an investigator-initiated trial at Peking University Cancer Hospital now in dose escalation, and preclinical results published in Nature Communications. MTS-109 is an mRNA-encoded CD3×CD19×BCMA trispecific T-cell engager, with positive early clinical data observed in an investigator-initiated study at Shanghai Changzheng Hospital, while simultaneous IND filings are underway in China and the U.S., targeting autoimmune diseases including systemic lupus erythematosus.

At the PCC stage, MTS-107 is an mRNA therapeutic vaccine for HPV16/18-positive cervical and head and neck cancers, achieving 100% complete response in mouse models when combined with PD-1 inhibitors. Asked about the timeline for domestic mRNA therapeutic cancer vaccines reaching market, Lai said it depends on regulatory progress, noting that personalized vaccines face production and CMC challenges that require joint solutions from industry and regulators.

When asked about core goals for the full year, Lai cited two priorities: generating more sustainable, scaled collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies, and achieving initial clinical validation for core pipeline programs.

Regarding AI4S, the company indicated the longer journey extends from AI-designed molecules to AI understanding of cells, and ultimately to AI-driven cell reprogramming.