From November 15 to 19, the 24th China Hi-tech Fair (hereinafter referred to as CHTF) was held in Shenzhen. On the occasion of celebrating the 20th National Congress of the CPC, as the promoter, participant and witness of major scientific and technological innovation achievements, the CHTF measures the world with science and technology, embraces the future with innovation, always insists on the mining of scientific and technological innovations, continually working hard in the field of scientific and technological innovation, and providing the best stage for scientific enterprises.
On the first day after the opening ceremony, the inauguration ceremony of the Carbon Neutrality Institute of SIAT was held. Cheng Huiming, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a scientist of carbon materials and energy materials, was appointed as the director of the Institute.
Synthetic biology industry matrix rises with a strong momentum
As a global advanced technology event, it is also a best window for an insight into new market demands and new trends of industry development. SIAT and SIAT University (preparatory) will appear in Pavilion 4 of Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center (Futian) with the theme of “seeking for development and promoting the integration of research and industry”. The exhibition will be arranged closely around the “14th Five-Year Plan”, focusing on the new fields and tracks of science and technology, and new forces and advantages of scientific innovation.
According to statistics, there are more than 250 projects in the exhibition area of SIAT, with more than 600 staff. The projects focus on “20 + 8” industrial innovation achievements, among which synthetic biology, brain science and other future industries have attracted much attention, where the display content is more rich, new products and new technology highlights are more prominent, and various activities are wonderful.
The exhibition area of SIAT
The exhibition area of SIAT this year shows a building model with distinctive decoration, which is also known as the first “upstairs and downstairs innovation and entrepreneurship complex” model in China. Built centered on the industrial application research at the upstairs and the business incubation management at the downstairs, the former launches technology cooperation relying on the research achievements of the infrastructure and the Synthetic Biology Institute, while the incubation management at the downstairs docks with the source of innovation and attracts startups with core competitiveness from the society by providing them with an excellent entrepreneurial environment and building shared office space and high-end experimental technology platforms so that the enterprises can “move in directly”. The building is located in the Shenzhen Industrial Innovation Center for Engineering Biology in Guangming District, Shenzhen.
The model of “upstairs and downstairs innovation and entrepreneurship complex” appears again as an advanced case of this CHTF. 19 enterprises have become a highlight of new tracks, products and technologies in the synthetic biology industry in the CHTF event this year.
Technological innovation starts from “upstairs and downstairs”
At present, 32 enterprises have settled in the complex, including Mingao Biotech, Liying Biotech, Biosysen Biotech. The financing amount of related enterprises exceeds one billion yuan, with an estimated value of nearly 10 billion yuan.
Shenzhen Mingao Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Mingao Biotech”), which settled in the Innovation Center in July 2021, is a technology-based enterprise integrating organoid technology research and development, product transformation, production and sales, and drug testing services. The company has the internationally advanced, independent intellectual property rights of organoid culture technology. It has independently developed a series of tumor organoid culture kits and special detection reagents, and realized one-stop technology solutions from tumor organoid culture to drug sensitivity detection, and organoid database building. It has been striving to provide personalized treatment technology for clinical practice, and provide new drug developing enterprises with high quality and efficient organoid models.
Mingao Biotech’s booth
The establishment of the Innovation Center has brought Mingao Biotech an opportunity to get close to the innovation from zero to one and the real demands in the chain of production, research and transformation. The Innovation Center has a complete industrial ecosystem and one-stop services to provide a strong guarantee for Mingao Biotech in its startup stage.
After solving the “1 to 10” in the industrialization process of research achievements, the start-up enterprises “graduating” from the Innovation Center can get greater development space in the Synthetic Biology Industrial Park, which is less than two kilometers away. For example, Liying Biotech, a company established in April 2022, settled in Industrial Park in September 2022 after “graduating” from the Innovation Center. At present, it has a wider experimental space and office area, achieving a growth of personnel and expansion in its production capacity, having signed orders with a value of millions of yuan.
Liying Biotech’s booth
It was learned that as a frontier innovative synthetic biology company, Liying Biotech applied structural biology methods to precisely transform the proteins at molecular level and 3D structure level. Based on the original high-flux protein purification and screening platform established by Oxford University, it has achieved rapid optimization of protein function, and produced protein materials with an excellent performance, providing high quality protein materials and services for the whole biological industry under different application scenarios. At present, Liying is mainly serving clients in such projects as protein antibody drugs popular in today’s market, mRNA vaccine sequence design, tumor marker modification, in vitro diagnostic reagents and biological enzyme preparations. A full-fermented, non-blending, additive-free low-purine juice sparkling wine (Trendy Wine) attracted visitors to stop and taste it at the site.
“Beer is a popular alcoholic beverage. With the innovation and upgrading of fermentation technology, we have released a new beer - low-purine beer. Our goal is to produce alcohol drinks with low purine content, while ensuring the original taste and aroma of the beverage.” Liu Yujia, a partner with Biosysen (Shenzhen) Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (Biosysen) told the audience, “according to the flavors and ingredients needed by products, we choose the most suitable strains, the most appropriate raw materials, formula and fermentation conditions to meet the taste requirements of consumers and provide a suitable option for patients with gout.”
Biosysen’s booth
It was learned that Biosysen was a startup co-founded in 2019 by several returned doctors, specializing in species design and application. Now it has two R&D centers in Guangming District and Bao’an District of Shenzhen and two pilot bases in Guangming District of Shenzhen and Huangshan City of Anhui Province, including two core technology platforms, namely biological information and genome design, genome manufacturing, quantitative omics analysis and refined pilot scale production.
The project of “CO2 resource utilization of synthetic biology driven by new energy of electrochemistry” is one of the highlights to give full play to the advantages of interdisciplinary projects. “Simply speaking, the purpose of our work is to help companies reduce carbon emissions without increasing their cost during their production.” Xia Lin, the founder and chairman of Powered Carbon, introduced to the audience. At present, the relevant technology has been deployed gradually in enterprises and factories with heavy emissions.
Powered Carbon’s booth
The company has initiated the technology of electrochemical and synthetic biology to solve the problem that CO2 is difficult to be used with high value after carbon capture. Through the cross-fusion of electrochemical catalysis technology and synthetic biology’s cell factory technology, CO2 is converted into high value additives with the advantages of low energy consumption and high efficiency.
The electrochemical catalytic module independently developed by the company can produce a single bulk chemical, and solve the problem of high energy and resource consumption of traditional chemicals. It can also produce carbon materials needed by synthetic biology’s fermentation technologies to replace glucose. By independently developing biofermentation bacteria suitable for the carbon material with synthetic biology technology and producing high-value biological products and chemicals, it can not only solve the demand of upstream enterprises with high carbon emissions for emissions cutting, in industries such as petroleum and petrochemical, cement, steel, coal, electric power, ships, ocean transportation and change their production methods. At the downstream, it can provide all kinds of terminal enterprises with green and low-carbon alternatives, help upgrade their industry and the export-oriented manufacturers to go global, in such industries as raw materials for cosmetics, medical materials, toy materials, food materials, and organic agriculture.
The exhibition area of SIAT in the HITH event this year continued to be popular, as the booths of enterprises were crowded by audience and visitors with high enthusiasm. They experienced the latest high-tech products as they liked to enjoy the charm of science and technology. The event has brought together all kinds of innovative and entrepreneurial resources. Through various activities such as effective project roadshow, capital docking, technical exchange, and experience sharing, it will provide all kinds of entrepreneurs with a platform for displaying, sharing and communication, provide all participants with various information and business opportunities. At the CHTF event, the Innovation Center will continue to forge ahead.