Jinkun Bio Overcomes Scale-Up Bottlenecks in Synthetic Biology with Multiple Thousand- to Ten-Thousand-Ton Production Lines
Synthetic biology, hailed as the “third biotechnology revolution,” is now widely applied in fields such as healthcare, green energy, daily chemicals and cosmetics, bio-based materials, and food consumption, demonstrating strong potential for industrial-scale applications. According to McKinsey data, the market size of synthetic biology and biomanufacturing is projected to reach hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars by 2025, with 60% of global material production expected to be achieved through biomanufacturing in the future.
In the medical aesthetics sector, upstream raw material production relies heavily on animal- and plant-derived sources or chemical compounds, posing challenges to scalability, entailing high costs, and causing significant environmental pollution.As the costs of three foundational synthetic biology technologies—gene sequencing, gene editing, and gene synthesis—continue to decline, the advantages of synthetic biological materials, including high purity, safety, and homology, are becoming increasingly prominent. This holds significant practical implications for addressing the current need to scale up raw material production in the medical aesthetics industry.
Once breakthroughs are achieved in technology and industrialization, it will inevitably open up greater potential for upstream raw materials in the medical aesthetics industry. Currently,Synthetic biomaterials also face the bottleneck of difficult large-scale mass production.
Scalable production is the pathway to commercializing synthetic biomaterials,Amplifying instabilities in the production process can easily lead to failed directed manufacturing.。The technical challenges in the manufacturing of synthetic biological materials are mainly reflected in two aspects: the selection and optimization of chassis strains (including strain selection and engineering), and product production, which encompasses processes such as fermentation and downstream purification.
Chassis strains serve as the "hardware foundation" for synthetic biological materials and act as host cells for metabolic reactions. Due to the complexity and metabolic characteristics of chassis strains, artificially introduced biological parts, circuits, or systems are influenced by the cell’s inherent metabolic and regulatory pathways. Therefore, during the production of biosynthetic materials, these strains require targeted design and engineering to optimize the fermentation efficiency of the engineered microbial cells.
Bottlenecks in the metabolic pathways of chassis strains limit production yield. Due to varying levels of complexity in metabolic pathways, the time required to develop industrially viable microbial strains differs. Based on the current state of synthetic biology, strains with simple metabolic pathways typically take approximately 2–3 years to develop, whereas those with complex pathways may require over a decade of research and still fail to yield industrially viable strains.
Following the selection and optimization of chassis strains, the production of synthetic biomaterials is achieved through fermentation processes, encompassing steps such as fermentation, separation and purification, modification synthesis, and product development and application.
Industrial-scale fermentation typically employs large fermenters. During the fermentation process, significant amounts of heat are generated, necessitating the circulation of cooling water through the jacket or heat exchange coils of the fermenter to maintain a constant temperature. Additionally, attention must be paid to monitoring pH fluctuations and ensuring proper sterilization prior to fermentation.
Scaling up production is not simply a matter of increasing fermenter size. As the scale expands from grams to kilograms and then to tons, fermentation performance often declines; therefore, each step requires renewed exploration and optimization.Scale-up requires rational calculation and design of both the fermenter and the fermentation process, along with continuous empirical optimization of the process during scale-up to enhance fermentation performance. Furthermore, during production scale-up, it is essential to continuously monitor the metabolic status of the strain and adjust its metabolic pathways, thereby improving overall fermentation efficiency by enhancing the strain’s productivity, proliferative capacity, and environmental tolerance.
Synthetic biology products for different applications have varying purity requirements, posing challenges to separation and purification technologies., currently in industryFor Biopolymer MaterialsMost mass production processes employ organic solvent precipitation, which tends to result in residual organic solvents and fails to achieve the purity standards required for medical aesthetics. During scale-up, additional purification steps are necessitated by insufficient purity, thereby increasing manufacturing costs.
Overall, in the scale-up production of synthetic biomaterials, it is essential to: (1) investigate metabolic pathway engineering in host strains and identify multiple strains suitable for industrialization; and (2) enhance fermentation processes and downstream separation and purification technologies to mitigate the impact of instability factors, thereby improving product quality and production efficiency.
The decline in the cost of synthetic biomaterials is primarily driven by two factors. On one hand, technological accumulation and advancements enable the design of more efficient metabolic pathways, the selection of high-performance industrial strains, and the adoption of lower-cost separation processes and raw materials. On the other hand, as the cost of foundational synthetic biology technologies decreases, the manufacturing of synthetic biomaterials will undergo large-scale capacity expansion, further reducing costs.
Amid the risks associated with cost control and market alignment, achieving high-efficiency mass production of synthetic biomaterials remains a focal challenge for the industry. Synthetic biomaterials offer advantages such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, renewability, and functional diversity, enabling their widespread application across numerous sectors—including the pharmaceutical industry, medical aesthetics, and agriculture—where demand is substantial.
It is understood that,Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. has overcome key technical challenges in host strain selection and optimization, as well as in critical production stages including fermentation and separation/purification. Having successfully navigated the path from pilot-scale trials to industrialization, the company has established multiple synthetic biology material production lines with capacities ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of tons. This achievement resolves the bottleneck of large-scale raw material manufacturing, enabling the imminent release of substantial production capacity to meet demand across various sectors.
Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. New Production Line Factory Planning
In the selection and optimization of chassis strains, Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. has accumulated over 100 chassis strains for various biosynthetic materials through years of experience, continuously upgrading them through innovation and iteration. This multi-strain synthesis pathway enables the selection of specific chassis strains tailored to raw materials from different regions, significantly enhancing production efficiency. For instance, on its polyglutamic acid production line, the strain yield reaches 80 g/L, which is double the average level, thereby effectively reducing production costs while improving production efficiency.
Jinkun Biotechnology has also achieved breakthroughs in process development for fermentation and downstream purification during product manufacturing.
In the fermentation stage, Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. has established a fermentation process control system based on multi-omics research, gradually scaling up product fermentation volumes. It is reported that Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology currently employs 50m3Fermentation has been conducted in large-scale fermenters, with pilot-scale and industrialization trials completed; commercial production is imminent. “Scaling up capacity will reduce costs by more than 60%.”
In the separation and purification stage, Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. adoptsFull Hydration Extraction ProcessIt is a separation and purification method without the addition of organic solvents. Compared with other extraction methods, it ensures no residual organic solvents in the final product, thereby enhancing safety while enabling production scale-up and significantly expanding its application fields, particularly for medical aesthetics product lines. In terms of purity, polyglutamic acid produced via this process can achieve a purity level exceeding 99%.
Currently,Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. is set to commence industrial-scale production of multiple raw material lines, including polyglutamic acid and pullulan. According to reports, the annual production capacity for polyglutamic acid will exceed 10,000 metric tons, while that for pullulan will surpass 1,000 metric tons, with significant capacity expected to be released by the end of the year.
The commercialization journey of synthetic biology enterprises begins with technical domains such as basic research, technology transfer, and early-stage product development, followed by the scaling up of mass production capabilities, which tests a company’s proficiency in cost control and product quality.
Since its establishment in 2013, Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. has devoted significant efforts to the research and development as well as industrialized production of raw materials for medical aesthetics, establishing an integrated platform for R&D and industrial application. At the level of basic research, the company leverages multidisciplinary technologies—including gene editing, bioinformatics, high-throughput screening, metabolic engineering, and multi-omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics)—to develop proprietary intellectual property rights.Biopolymer Material Strain Resource Bank。
At the applied research level, Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology has established a proprietary fermentation process for high-viscosity systems of biopolymer materials, while also setting upPilot-Scale Fermentation PlatformandGreen Separation and Extraction Platform, enabling industrial-scale pilot experiments and process package design, thereby laying the foundation for the industrialization, engineering, and supporting infrastructure development of polymer materials.
At the level of quality standard control, Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. has establishedQuality Control Platform, to perform physicochemical testing, biosafety evaluation, methodology development, quality management, and other tasks, thereby ensuring product safety and consistent quality.
It is worth noting that behind the process scale-up of synthetic biomaterials lies extensive trial and error, which requires substantial support from highly specialized talent. One of the challenges facing the entire synthetic biology industry is that disciplines such as fermentation engineering were not popular and received limited attention before the sector’s recent surge in popularity, leading to a significant talent gap.
Amidst such rapid industrialization, Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. is backed by a substantial pool of specialized professionals. Its team includes a Chief Technology Officer with years of experience in scaling up microbial processes, and a Head of Production with extensive experience in managing synthetic biology industrial manufacturing.
Many industry insiders believe that mass production technology is the key to breaking through in the application of synthetic biology conversion. And now,Ningbo Jinkun Biotechnology Co., Ltd., having cracked the code on scalability, is now in the fast lane of the synthetic biomaterials industry.