Westlake Omics Secures Strategic Investment from Ruijiang KangSheng to Advance Proteomics Diagnostics and Virtual Cell-Powered AI Drug Development

Recently, Westlake Omics (Hangzhou) Biotech Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Westlake Omics") announced that it has received an exclusive strategic investment from Rivercity Kindstar Venture Capital, managed by Ruijiang Capital. This strategic investment not only reflects the capital market's strong recognition of Westlake Omics' original technologies and clinical translation capabilities in artificial intelligence-powered proteomics, but also marks the beginning of deep industrial collaboration between the industry and technology partners around the proteomics diagnostics sector, jointly driving the clinical translation of proteomics research outcomes in China and leading global industrial development in this field.

Founded by Professor Guo Tiannan of Westlake University, Westlake Omics is driven by a dual-core approach combining proteomics and the artificial intelligence virtual cell. The company has established an integrated closed-loop system that bridges diagnosis and treatment across three pillars: one arm serving clinical research, one arm delivering precision diagnostics in clinical settings, and one arm empowering innovative drug development. This continuous cycle generates large-scale clinical and pharmaceutical proteomic data, which in turn drives iterative upgrades of mass spectrometry-based detection technologies and the underlying artificial intelligence multimodal foundation models, achieving synergistic growth across the three business areas of research, diagnostics, and drug development.

Westlake Omics' core research and development team has long been dedicated to research in proteomics and virtual cell research, consistently producing top-tier international academic outputs. Most recently, Professor Guo Tiannan's team published two important papers consecutively in the leading international journal Nature.

A core prerequisite for building an artificial intelligence virtual cell is the acquisition of spatiotemporal dynamic data of cells, among which the collection of spatial proteomics data is a major bottleneck.

To overcome this bottleneck, Professor Guo Tiannan's team at Westlake University has long been dedicated to the research and development of proteomics technologies for minute clinical samples, developing a series of technologies that have been translated through Westlake Omics.

In June 2026, Professor Guo Tiannan's team, in collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Harbin Medical University, and other institutions, published a landmark study in Nature, presenting the highest-resolution and most comprehensive spatial atlas of the human proteome to date. The study covered 58 normal tissue types and 25 cancer types, quantifying over 13,000 proteins across nearly 3,000 samples, effectively establishing a "protein navigation system" for the human body and providing core data support for the construction of virtual cell models.

Compared with transcriptomic data, proteins are the direct executors of biological functions and are also the targets of the vast majority of drugs. Virtual cells built on proteomics can more faithfully reflect the functional states of cells, and their predictions of drug efficacy and toxicity are of greater clinical relevance. It is worth noting that this spatial atlas of the human proteome is only version 1.0, and the proteomic dynamics of various human organs under physiological and pathological conditions still require further in-depth investigation.

Behind this data capability lies the support of underlying detection technologies. Proteomics analysis has long faced challenges including high sample requirements, slow processing speeds, and high costs, making it difficult to support large-scale data production. The minute sample detection system developed by Professor Guo Tiannan's team enables standardized analysis using only tissue samples the size of a sesame seed or microliter volumes of bodily fluids, with significantly improved detection efficiency and substantially reduced costs. This technology has made high-throughput, high-quality proteomic data production feasible and has laid the foundation for Westlake Omics' "data factory" system.

Moreover, unlike many teams that rely on public data for model training, Westlake Omics' core data are all derived from standardized outputs of its proprietary technology systems. The company has established full-process quality control standards covering everything from sample processing to data analysis. In the team's view, the core scarce resource in the integration of artificial intelligence and life sciences is the capability to produce high-quality, standardized, multidimensional proprietary data—and this is precisely Westlake Omics' core competitive advantage in the virtual cell field.

If the spatial proteome atlas addressed the fundamental question of "what to build with," then the second top-tier publication answered the question of "how to build it."

In July 2026, Professor Guo Tiannan's team, in collaboration with multiple international and domestic research institutions, published a review in Nature, proposing a systematic framework for constructing virtual cells that is verifiable, iterable, and transferable. Using Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model organism, the paper proposed integrating prior biological knowledge, cellular spatial structure, and dynamic perturbation data to build a cell-level artificial intelligence agent that incorporates both biological constraints and predictive capabilities. This methodology is not limited to yeast, but is transferable to various cell systems including human, animal, plant, and microbial cells.

The paper clearly defined the application positioning of virtual cells: they are not designed to pursue a perfect digital twin that replicates every molecular detail, nor to solely focus on the parameter scale and certain metrics of artificial intelligence models. Rather, they are functional predictive modules built around specific, addressable biomedical problems. The core objective of the model is to achieve practical application in real-world scenarios such as drug development and disease diagnosis and treatment with minimal cost investment.

It is understood that the team's world-first virtual cell model based on perturbed proteomics will also be formally published in the near future. From underlying data production technologies, to systematic construction frameworks, to model building and validation for specific scenarios, Westlake Omics is progressively establishing a complete technological chain for virtual cells.

In fact, the concept of virtual cells has been proposed for several years, but has been largely confined to transcriptomic data analysis and a numbers-driven competition in model parameter scale. The core challenge for industrialization lies in the gap between technology and real-world application scenarios—model developers lack an understanding of the industrial needs underlying fundamental principles of cell biology, while the industry side also lacks the scenarios and data foundation to validate models.

Westlake Omics' approach to deployment is a "soft landing": rather than developing virtual cells in isolation from existing operations, the company integrates them into its established industry ecosystem, leveraging mature business scenarios to support technological deployment.

Since its founding, Westlake Omics has built a tripartite business system covering clinical research, precision diagnostics, and innovative drug development, establishing deep collaborations with over a hundred universities, top-tier hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. These business activities are themselves application scenarios for proteomics technologies. As virtual cell technologies mature, they can be directly upgraded from "detection and analysis" to "simulation and prediction," enabling seamless integration into existing customer needs.

Current scientific research services and drug development collaborations have provided Westlake Omics with a stable customer base and scenario understanding. When future virtual cell products are launched, validation and deployment can be carried out within the existing collaboration ecosystem without the need to build a market from scratch. From this perspective, the existing business network serves as a natural testing ground and launch channel for virtual cell technologies.

The introduction of Rivercity Kindstar Venture Capital as an industrial investor in this round further strengthens this advantage. The broad diagnostic product channel networks of the industrial partner can not only help Westlake Omics address the commercialization gaps in its clinical diagnostics business, but more importantly, serve as an entry point for real-world data, forming a positive cycle of "product deployment, data accumulation, and model upgrading."

Following the completion of this financing round, Westlake Omics will continue to strengthen its technological foundation of "high-quality data and multimodal models," accelerating its presence in the virtual cell sector. On one hand, the company will continue advancing the iteration of its foundational proteomics models, gradually integrating multimodal data including genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and spatial imaging to enhance the predictive dimensions and accuracy of its models. On the other hand, it will launch functional virtual cell product modules for core scenarios including drug development and precision medicine, driving the industrial translation of its technologies.

Looking ahead, Westlake Omics, in partnership with Rivercity Kindstar Venture Capital, will leverage original technologies as its foundation and industrial collaboration as a catalyst, continuously promoting the high-quality development of integrated precision medicine diagnosis and treatment. With independently controlled cutting-edge omics technologies, the company aims to safeguard public health and help establish China's artificial intelligence plus life sciences industry among the global first tier.