Bridging the 'Darwinian Sea': AI Foundation Models Join Forces with Synthetic Biology to Accelerate HMO Scale-Up
BioMap
Developer of Innovative Drug R&D Platform
Recently,BioMapAndTongxi BioOfficially announced the establishment of a strategic partnership under the witness of the Huangshan District Committee and the District Government.
In the future,Both parties will focus on the bottlenecks of the synthetic biology industry, with an emphasis on Tongxi Bio.HMOsGene-Modified Microorganism (GMM) Platform and Intelligent Production Line Construction, based on BioMap's profound accumulation in AI large model algorithm development, biocomputing platform construction, and intelligent system building, especially in the field of synthetic biology with molecular models, metabolic models, systems biology models, and ecological models developed from strain large models, fully empowering Tongxi Bio's entire business process from product development, small-scale trials, pilot tests to large-scale production, improving R&D efficiency, accelerating innovation, reducing production costs, and promoting the large-scale industrial implementation of HMO.
This collaboration represents an important corporate practice in crossing the "Darwinian Sea," marking that large foundational models in life sciences are penetrating the core aspects of biomanufacturing.
For Tongxi Biotech, HMO, as a key active component in breast milk, has seen continuously growing market demand, urgently requiring AI technology to further enhance R&D and production efficiency; for BioMap, the large foundational model of life sciences needs to be validated and iterated in real industry scenarios, and synthetic biology is precisely the best testing ground.
BioMap Vice General Manager Peng Zhen pointed out that the essence of the collaboration between the two parties is the deep alignment between the demand for large AI model technology and the pain points of industrial scenarios: BioMap's large AI model can accelerate the technical transformation of Tongxi Biotech, injecting an intelligent engine to reduce costs and increase efficiency; while Tongxi Biotech's industrial data provides valuable application scenarios for the industrialization of BioMap’s AI models.
In the short termThe cooperation between the two parties will accelerate the scaled production and cost reduction of HMO, promoting its popularization from a high-end nutritional additive to a mass-market health consumer product.In the long term, the AI large model and industry experience accumulated through cooperation can be replicated in other synthetic biology fields such as rare sugars and bio-based materials, forming a "technology-data-scenario-industry" virtuous cycle flywheel effect.
As the cooperation materializes, an "AI-empowered, industry-nurtured" synthetic biology innovation model is taking shape. In the future, BioMap and Tongxi Bio are expected to jointly build a leading synthetic biology "smart factory" in the industry.
BioMapThe cross-modal life science foundational large model with 210 billion parameters can decode the underlying rules of genomes, proteins, cells, and biological systems. It builds high-quality AI task models for life sciences with less data and cost consumption, and is known as a biological simulator.
Currently, BioMap hasDrug Research and Development, Biomanufacturing, Basic Scientific Research, HealthcareIn more than 200 tasks across various fields, State-of-the-Art (SOTA) performance has been achieved, and large model-driven professional AI Agents are provided to over 700 global clients, covering dozens of specialized subfields.
Tongxi Biotech(A wholly-owned subsidiary of Suzhou Yixi Biotechnology Co., Ltd.)Is an innovative game-changer in China's synthetic biology field. The companyInvested 450 million yuan in the construction of China's first batch of HMO synthetic biology projectsFactoryIn addition to the existing production lines, after the official launch of the second line in Phase I, the annual production capacity will reach 3,000 tons, making it the largest HMO factory in the world and filling the industrialization gap in this field in China.
Tongxi Biotech has rapidly grown into a unicorn enterprise in China's HMO field, breaking the foreign monopoly with its self-developed high-performance strains and leading technology.
Synthetic biology is hailed as the "Third Biotech Revolution," yet its transition from laboratory research to scaled production still faces numerous challenges. As Liu Zhenyun, founder of BioMap, pointed out,Crossing the "Darwinian Sea" of synthetic biology requires overcoming three major barriers: technology, cost, and efficiency., especially to overcome core challenges such as inefficient design and process bottlenecks.
To address these industrialization pain points, Tongxi Biotech has independently built a Genetically Modified Microorganism (GMM) platform with full intellectual property rights in the HMO field in China, effectively resolving the inherent contradiction between "high yield" and "high consumption." By integrating a low-cost synthetic culture medium developed in-house and a metabolic pathway optimization algorithm, the platform achieves digital precision control over the fermentation process, fully embodying the advanced concept of deep integration of data-driven intelligent design and engineering production.
--Tongxi Bio
