Exclusive Interview with Dr. Tao Lu, CSO of Tianwu Tech: Decades of Dedication to AI-Driven Phenotypic Screening

In October this year, Dr. Lu Tao officially joined the AI pharmaceutical company Matwings Technology as the chief scientist.

Previously, Dr. Lu Tao worked at the MD Anderson Cancer Center and NASA's Biological Center for nearly 20 years.During this period, Dr. Lu Tao mainly focused on the development of cell model analysis methods, mechanism research, and the construction of drug discovery platforms, successfully assisting multiple global biotech start-ups in accelerating the R&D of new drugs.

At the end of 2017, Dr. Lu Tao returned to China and joined WuXi AppTec's biology division as the head of early drug research and development.In less than five years, Dr. Lu Tao built a team from scratch at WuXi AppTec, achieving rapid growth in both revenue and team size. He also successfully assisted multiple biotech companies in expediting drug development, helping them complete IND filings and advance to clinical trials within a short period.

"At that time, it was like I had started a company by myself. I had to personally manage project development, team operations, client communication, and personnel recruitment." Recalling his experience at WuXi AppTec, Dr. Lu Tao said, "There were certainly challenges, but with the support of the company and department leaders, as well as the joint efforts of the team members, we achieved many gratifying results. I am grateful to WuXi AppTec for providing me with this extremely rare platform, which allowed me to quickly transition from being a scientist to becoming a science-savvy manager."

Nowadays, why does this scientist, who has successful scientific research and management experience, choose to join a start-up company? Dr. Lu Tao answered: "Joining Matwings Technology was not a spur-of-the-moment decision for me. Instead, it was a well-considered choice made by both myself and Matwings Technology—a mutual commitment."

Before joining Matwings Technology, a startup, Dr. Lu Tao had already attempted to establish his own company back in 2007. The company focused on creating disease-related cellular models to support drug development. However, due to the subprime mortgage crisis at the time, the company faced significant challenges in financing, and that attempt at entrepreneurship ended unsuccessfully. "That was one of the most challenging periods of my life," Dr. Lu recalled.

Not only did they encounter difficulties in funding, but phenotypic screening technology also could not be performed in a high-throughput manner more than a decade ago. At that time, the focus of attention on phenotypic screening was on whether researchers could observe the effect of cells on a particular signaling pathway under an appropriate screening method.

But at that time, Dr. Lu Tao had some preliminary "advanced" ideas: whether there could be a technology that allows researchers to simultaneously observe changes in multiple signaling pathways in one experiment, thereby obtaining the cellular responses across various toxicological and signaling pathways under the direct action of a certain drug.

It is precisely with the regret of entrepreneurship from several years ago and the original intention related to cell phenotype screening technology that Dr. Lu Tao has been paying attention to the niche field of cell phenotype screening and drug development over the years. He has also witnessed many early scientific hypotheses mature into industrial realities as the technology has advanced."I have never given up on the idea of applying my decades of research achievements and industry experience to the growth of a startup."

These ideas have seen leapfrog development due to breakthroughs in AI technology in recent years. Today, by utilizing AI + phenotypic screening technology, researchers can observe changes in hundreds of signaling pathways in a single experiment.

Breakthroughs and iterations in AI technology have given Dr. Lu Tao the opportunity to realize his dream, "So I believe now is a good time to join Matwings Technology and enter the AI pharmaceuticals track. Matwings Technology is exploring the field of AI compound design moving towards cell phenotype screening, while I started from cell phenotype screening for drug development and discovered the opportunity to integrate with AI. I share a common goal with Matwings Technology and our experiences complement each other, which has led to our current collaboration."

In Dr. Lu Tao's view, joining Matwings Technology this time will be completely different from his entrepreneurial experience several years ago.

On a personal levelAfter several years of scientific research at the Anderson Cancer Center, project experience at the NASA Biology Center, and team management at WuXi AppTec, Dr. Lu Tao has transformed from a scientist into a science-savvy manager.

At MD Anderson Cancer Center, particularly within the NASA Biocenter, previous projects involving interdisciplinary content have significantly broadened Dr. Lu Tao's perspective and enhanced his ability to break through disciplinary barriers.When conducting translational medicine research at the Anderson Cancer Center, Dr. Lu Tao often needed to collaborate with basic biological scientists, clinicians, pathologists, and pharmacology experts. While working at NASA, Dr. Lu Tao also had to cooperate with astronauts, scientists, aerospace instrument designers, aerospace equipment engineers, rocket launch specialists, and many others from various fields to successfully advance projects.

"Even for a very small cell culture dish, we must customize it according to the special microgravity environment in space, then coordinate various departments for research, development, and production, and finally train the astronauts on the relevant experimental operation procedures." Dr. Lu Tao recalled that this experience at NASA involved multiple interdisciplinary fields, which also equipped him with the ability to quickly adapt to any new environment in the future.

At the enterprise levelAlthough Matwings Technology is a startup, its core team is a multidisciplinary cross-disciplinary team led by research and development. By leveraging the interdisciplinary integration and technological innovation of biology, pharmacy, AI, biophysics, computational physics, chemistry, and life sciences, Matwings Technology has quickly built up its own scientific and technical barriers, increasing the success rate of project development.

Matwings Technology focuses on developing AI-powered high-throughput cell phenotype screening technology to discover new targets, new indications, new molecules, and new drug combination approaches, supporting efficient, successful, and low-cost drug development.

In fact, as early as 2017, Dr. Lu Tao realized that ifUsing AI to assist in phenotypic screening will rapidly enhance the understanding of relationships between cell phenotypes, signaling pathways, compounds, and more, thereby accelerating and improving the development of new drugs. Since 2018, Dr. Lu Tao has been deeply engaged in the application of AI-assisted phenotypic screening in drug discovery, achieving many promising research outcomes.

Regarding the common pain points currently faced by global drug development companies, Dr. Lu Tao analyzed, "Many drugs proceed smoothly during the early stages of development, but their failure rate after entering clinical trials is as high as 80% to 90%. This pain point exists because people do not conduct in-depth research on compounds during the early stages of development."

AI-powered cell phenotype screening allows researchers to understand the effects of hundreds of targets and signaling pathways on a particular cell in a single experiment. Through systematic data analysis, it becomes possible to avoid certain potential adverse factors during the early stage of target selection, thereby improving the efficiency and success rate of drug clinical trial development.

Matwings Technology is the first company in China to focus on AI-powered high-throughput phenotypic screening. Globally, its对标company is Recursion (NASDAQ:RXRX), a unicorn in AI pharmaceuticals.

At the technical level, both Recursion and Matwings Technology discover hidden relationships between compounds, targets, and indications through AI-powered phenotypic screening methods. The former relies on the integrated system called Recursion OS, combining wet-lab and dry-lab biology for industrialized and digitized drug discovery. According to Recursion’s annual report, based on its technology platform, it reduces the number of preclinical candidate compounds screened, the time required to validate lead compounds, and the cost of validating lead compounds to less than one-third of the traditional industry average. Currently, Recursion is the first AI pharmaceutical startup to advance AI-designed small molecules into Phase 2 clinical trials.

Different from this, Matwings Technology has its own differentiated advantages in addition to Recursion's technical features:

Most distinctive is that Matwings Technology owns unique cell lines and, based on these, has laid out in the fields of oncology, neurodegenerative diseases, fibrosis, and inflammation.

In addition, based on AI-empowered fluorescence methods, Matwings Technology can also perform staining in different organelles, with up to 3,000 phenotypic features of cells treated with targeted compounds. Matwings Technology also has a systematic Hit-to-lead optimization process, including proprietary patented CADD algorithms, independently innovated AI technology modules, rapid wet-lab iteration modules, and an ADMET drug-likeness evaluation platform.

Based on the aforementioned general technical modules and fundamental underlying logic, Matwings Technology has deep expertise in three areas: the construction of cell models, the establishment of compound libraries, and the analysis of related information in the later stages. These capabilities can be quickly applied to different disease models, expanding the product pipeline. At the same time, during the processes of model establishment and data analysis, Matwings continuously accumulates large amounts of data through ongoing experiments, progressively expanding the information pool, optimizing analytical outcomes, and identifying compounds with better drug-like properties.

Based on decades of research and practice in the field of cell biology, Dr. Lu Tao has accumulated a wealth of cell model experience and successfully established various high-throughput, high-content cell models related to diseases. These include cellular aging models, tumor cell growth, death, and signaling pathway models, tumor cell DNA damage repair models, fibrosis models, immune activation and interaction cell models, inflammatory response models, and various neurodegenerative disease cell models. These models are suitable for compound phenotypic screening, drug development, target discovery, and signaling pathway research.

Matwings Technology has also formed a high-frequency iterative "A(AI)-B(Biology)-C(Chemistry)" dry-wet experimental closed loop.Matwings Technology's artificial intelligence laboratory located in Shanghai is mainly used for AI-empowered phenotypic screening and molecular design; the high-throughput phenotypic laboratory constructed is used for Assay establishment and bioactivity validation; the medicinal chemistry experimental platform under its subsidiary located in Chongqing successfully synthesized AI-designed dual-target compounds in just over a month.

With the establishment and operation of the platform and the expansion and improvement of the team, Matwings Technology has commercially implemented projects in molecular design and signed a multi-million-dollar cooperation project with a listed pharmaceutical company.

In the future, Matwings Technology will focus on developing an AI + phenotypic screening technology platform, providing products and services related to chemical screening and chemical structure design for partner enterprises. This will accelerate pharmaceutical R&D for drug companies and enable the company to quickly regain profitability. Based on the accumulation of preliminary data and the expansion of the company's scale, Matwings Technology will also selectively develop certain targets into its own innovative drugs, establishing relevant self-developed pipelines; or license out some targets, collaborating with other pharmaceutical companies to advance pipeline development through authorized partnerships.

In order to meet the upcoming rapid development of the company, Matwings Technology is currently conducting its second round of financing, which will be used for the subsequent establishment of a biological wet lab, a phenotypic screening technology platform, as well as the related teams and supporting teams.

When asked about his feelings after recent exchanges with investors, Dr. Lu Tao frankly said, "Although it is currently a winter for the biopharmaceutical industry, I am very glad to tell you that Matwings Technology has received positive feedback in the investment market. The investment market is very optimistic about Matwings Technology's differentiated advantages in AI drug development."

For the next plan, Dr. Lu Tao told VCBeat New Medicine that a large amount of raw data would be generated during the process of cell phenotype screening, and based on analysis, a large number of innovative targets and compound structures could be produced. On this basis, continuous accumulation will lead to many targets and compounds with higher success rates in clinical trials.Matwings Technology aims to fundamentally shorten the drug development cycle, increase the success rate of drug development, and reduce the cost of drug development by starting from the source of the target."