Future Trends! Bio manufacturing pilot platform goes viral: from 220 million investment to 20 national level platforms
In the field of biomanufacturing, successful processes in the laboratory often fail once scaled up to ton level production, and challenges such as equipment adaptation, parameter optimization, and cost control keep most innovations at the paper stage.
The rise of biomanufacturing pilot platforms is filling this gap with the model of "professional carriers+shared services".
From Guangdong's investment of 220 million yuan to build a synthetic biology pilot platform, to the intensive introduction of support policies in six provinces across the country, and to the clear goal of cultivating more than 20 national level platforms by 2027 at the national level, the pilot platform has become the core
infrastructure for promoting the leap of biomanufacturing from "technological breakthroughs" to "industrial landing".
1、 Policy intensive intensification: Building a pilot platform matrix from local to national levels
The construction boom of biomanufacturing pilot platforms began with precise policy efforts. As an "incubator" for industrial innovation, the pilot platform has not only been included in the focus of local industrial upgrading, but has also become a key lever for the country to promote the high-quality development of biomanufacturing.
1. Local priority: Each of the six provinces has its own focus. Guangdong Province is undoubtedly the "vanguard" in the construction of the pilot platform.
In August 2025, the Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission officially approved the pilot platform project for synthetic biomanufacturing, with a total investment of 217.33 million yuan.
Focusing on the construction of four core sub platforms: intelligent microbial pilot platform (focusing on high value-added biobased products), functional
macromolecule pilot platform (verifying functional protein processes), green biomass methanol pilot platform (developing biomass gasification technology), and intelligent plant pilot platform (building vertical plant factories), we plan to renovate 8500 square meters of site and purchase 365 sets of instruments and equipment.
This is not the first layout in Guangdong.
As early as May 2024, Guangdong included the synthetic biomanufacturing pilot platform in the "Seven Provincial Pilot Platforms", and issued documents such as the "Interim Measures for the Construction and Operation Management of Pilot Platforms" in 2025, clarifying biomanufacturing as the core field.
As of now, six provinces in China, including Shanghai, Sichuan, Henan, Guizhou, and Fujian, have followed suit and formed a layout of "each with its own focus and complementary collaboration":
Shanghai: More than 360 institutions with pilot functions have been built, and a plan will be released in 2025 emphasizing the collaboration between biomanufacturing and biomedicine;
Sichuan: Focus on optimizing approval processes and talent incentives to address the pain points of slow implementation and talent shortage in pilot projects;
Zhengzhou, Henan Province: Key layout of biopharmaceutical pilot projects, targeting the blank in the biomanufacturing industry in the Central Plains region;
Guizhou: plans to achieve pilot service coverage of key industries in the province, including the field of biomanufacturing, by 2027;
Fujian: Propose to cultivate more than 30 provincial-level pilot platforms by 2028 and strengthen industry university research collaboration.
2. National Coordination: Cultivate 20 national level platforms by 2027
On top of local practices, national level planning is more instructive.
In June 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued a notice on the cultivation of pilot capacity building platforms for biomanufacturing, clarifying the goal of cultivating more than 20 pilot capacity building platforms, serving over 200 enterprises, and incubating more than 400 products by 2027.
This policy not only provides an "upgrade channel" for local platforms, but also avoids redundant construction between regions through unified standards and coordinated resources, promoting the development of pilot platforms towards "specialization, scale, and sharing".
2、 The value of the pilot platform: reducing costs for enterprises and accelerating industries
For biomanufacturing enterprises, the value of pilot platforms goes far beyond "providing venues and equipment". It connects the research and production ends and solves the core pain points of innovation implementation.
1. Lowering the threshold for entrepreneurship: From "buying equipment" to "using platforms". "In the past, starting a business required spending tens of millions of yuan to buy fermentation tanks and build production lines, but now renting a pilot platform can verify the process, reducing costs by at least 60%
The sentiment of a synthetic biology entrepreneur expresses the common needs of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The unit price of pilot equipment for biomanufacturing, such as fermentation tanks and purification systems, can easily reach millions, and it needs to be customized according to product characteristics, which is an "unbearable burden" for startups.
The sharing mode of the pilot platform allows enterprises to conduct process scale-up experiments without building their own hardware, and only need to pay service fees, significantly reducing the cost of innovation trial and error.
Taking the Guangdong Synthetic Biology Pilot Platform as an example, its "Intelligent Microbial Pilot Platform" is designed with a "switchable production device" that can simultaneously adapt to the pilot needs of multiple bio based products.
After one enterprise completes the experiment, the equipment can be cleaned and optimized for use by the next, and the equipment utilization rate can be increased by more than three times.
The document mentions the procurement of fermentation tanks from multiple manufacturers, which indirectly reflects the driving effect of the pilot platform on the upstream equipment industry.
2. Accelerating Technology Transformation: Breaking the "Laboratory to Industry" Gap
The "parameter difference" between laboratory processes and industrial production is the biggest obstacle to the implementation of innovative biomanufacturing.
你，
For example, if the dissolved oxygen and stirring rate parameters of a 10 liter fermentation tank in the laboratory are directly applied to a 10 ton production tank, it may result in a product yield drop of more than 50%.
The core function of the pilot platform is to optimize key process parameters, verify equipment adaptability, and provide a "replicable solution" for industrial production through "gradient amplification experiments" (such as 10L → 100L → 1000L).
The "Functional Large Molecule Pilot Platform" on the Guangdong platform is specifically designed to meet the pilot testing needs of functional proteins.
It has built a full process validation system from fermentation, purification to formulation, which can simulate the process stability under different production scenarios. This is the ability that most research teams lack, and it is also the core concern that enterprises dare not easily put into production.
