Trillion blue ocean! People's Daily again mentioned biofabrication

On April 15, the economic edition of the People's Daily used nearly two-thirds of the space to introduce the new progress and industrial reviews of the bio-manufacturing industry. From the concept to the local deployment to the specific enterprise, you can see that the planning of the top building for biological manufacturing is becoming more and more specific and clearer.

1、Official media stamped trillion-level industry

In this issue, Wang Xu, associate researcher of China Electronics and Information Industry Development Research Institute, wrote an article entitled "The scale of the core industry of bio-manufacturing is about one trillion Yuan".

He mentioned that emerging fields such as hyaluronic acid and synthetic starch have realized and run or lead with developed countries, and the cluster effect has initially emerged. How large is the biomanufacturing market in China exactly? Reports from multiple research institutions show that the scale of China's biomanufacturing market reached 420 billion yuan in 2023. It is expected to maintain a high growth rate of over 10% in the next decade and increase to 1.3 to 2 trillion yuan by 2030.

Although biomanufacturing is usually associated with pharmaceuticals, the scope of this industry today is actually very broad, covering areas such as energy, materials, food and agriculture, including the replacement of fossil fuels and traditional manufacturing.

The article mentions focusing on the development of "key few" such as pharmaceutical intermediates, high-performance biomaterial precursors, and bio-based platform compounds. While promoting cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the production of bulk products, efforts should also be made to develop high value-added and small-variety new products.

No matter which track is laid out, the core of the biomanufacturing revolution is ultimately: using engineered organisms (yeast, algae, bacteria, etc.) to produce goods on a large scale, among which "cell factories" are the key.

The People's Daily of the same period also published an article titled "Cell Factory", documenting a microcosm of China's biomanufacturing industry from pilot platforms to key products.

2、Three enterprises were named for building "cell factories"

The first step to promoting the development of the biomanufacturing industry is to build Bridges.

The article first visited the world's largest pilot-scale technology transfer platform built by Huaxi Biotech, a leading enterprise in synthetic biology. The platform has been in operation for half a year and has undertaken more than 30 projects in the field of biomanufacying, connecting the upstream and downstream of the industry.

For instance, the "key enzyme" independently developed by the synthetic biology startup Zhonghe Gene encountered difficulties during the pilot-scale scale-up stage. Here, it only took one month to complete the scale-up test, reducing the cost by 90% compared to expectations.

Synthetic biology, as a cutting-edge technology, is highly dependent on the transformation of scientific and technological achievements from research institutes and universities. Without pilot-scale production, it is difficult for enterprises to make up their minds to invest merely by relying on laboratory results.

Data shows that the success rate of transformation of scientific and technological achievements after verification by pilot bases can reach 50% to 80%, while the success rate of scientific and technological achievements that have not been verified by pilot bases will be lower than 30%.

The gradual smoothness of the channel from "technology research and development - concept verification - pilot production and maturation - large-scale manufacturing" is laying a solid foundation for the development of the industry.

Subsequently, the article introduced two specific products, namely stevioside of Yingjia Hesheng and riquiolabel of Juno Therapeutics' CAR-T cell therapy.

Among them, Yingjia Hesheng has replaced cultivated land with a "cell factory", changing the past predicament where the extraction of stevioside relied on traditional planting. It is one of only four enterprises worldwide that have been approved for the FDA GRAS rare stevioside component Reb I (Reb I), and it is also the only Chinese enterprise among them.

It is reported that currently, seven of the top ten food and beverage companies in the world are clients of Yingjia Hesheng. More than half of the world's top ten food ingredient companies use the products of this company.

As the leading domestic cell therapy company, Juno Therapeutics has approved three indications for its first product, Riquiolabel Injection, by the National Medical Products Administration of China.

Up to now, the number of people who have received the infusion has exceeded 300. We are also laying out the broader market in the field of autoimmune diseases. Currently, we are conducting Phase I/II research on refractory systemic lupus erythematosus in China, which is expected to be completed in May 2026.

At the end:

Last year, when People's Daily and other official media mentioned biomanufacturing, they mostly focused on simple reports such as conference activities (the unveiling of the State Investment Biomanufacturing Innovation Research Institute) and speeches by academicians (the 2024 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Conference).

After 2025, it can be clearly observed that biomanufacturing has been given a higher positioning in policy documents. Not only does the local industrial scale continue to expand, but the exploration and reporting of technological application scenarios have also become more in-depth.

The predicaments in aspects such as the innovation of underlying technical equipment, pilot-scale production and industrialization, and the market promotion of products have also been repeatedly mentioned and emphasized.

There is every reason to believe that this year will be a crucial one for the coordinated efforts of policies and industries and for the leapfrog development of biomanufacturing.