Academician Ma Dawei: Synthetic biology is a good track for clustering drugs, pesticides, and feed!
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- Issue Time
- Sep 4,2025
Summary
Ma Dawei, an academician of the CAS Member, recently pointed out the industry misunderstanding with "cost as the king" at the 2025 Nanyang Synthetic Biology Industry Conference.
Synthetic organisms do not need to focus solely on drugs, but rather on bulk chemicals such as pesticides and feed, making it easier to release value. ”
1、 The pharmaceutical field is not the optimal solution for synthetic biology.
On the one hand, modern drugs have high activity and low usage. For example, the annual usage of fish sperm protein in China is only 180 kilograms, and some antibody drugs are only over 30 kilograms.
Therefore, the development of synthetic biotechnology for this production capacity has a low input-output ratio;
On the other hand, most drugs have non natural structures, such as kinase inhibitors' benzene ring linked benzene ring ', which are difficult to find suitable enzyme catalysis. Morphine, artemisinin, and other drugs are still difficult to biologically manufacture.
Even if tetracycline and erythromycin are reduced to 250 yuan/kg and 400 yuan/kg through synthetic biology, their advantages are difficult to convert due to limited total quantity.
2、 Bulk chemicals are the fertile ground for synthetic biology. In the field of pesticides, the amount of pesticides used in China's planting industry will reach 240000-250000 tons by 2025, and the demand for biopesticides will increase.
The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has achieved solid fermentation of avermectin through synthetic biology, reducing costs by 8.38%, and genetically modified strains can also enhance pesticide activity.
In the field of feed, the total output of industrial feed in China will be 315 million tons in 2024. A certain company will replace soybean meal with amino acids produced by synthetic organisms.
By 2025, the industrial park will produce 30000 tons of amino acids annually, reducing the cost of feed per pig by 15 yuan and achieving significant cost reduction benefits.
3、 Synthetic biology and chemical synthesis are not in competition, but complementary. Like human insulin, it first chemically synthesizes DNA fragments, then synthesizes peptide chains, and finally chemically connects; Saframycin is synthesized using a "chemical enzymatic method" in 4-5 steps, significantly improving efficiency.
Synthetic biology needs to return to the essence of the industry: adapting to the scale of demand and reducing costs are the key.
Pesticides, feed and other major fields are a good direction for technology implementation and value creation.
