Li Kaifu invested in a "zero-calorie sugar" company in Chengdu.
The most distinctive feature of Yingjia Hesheng is not its position in the "alternative sweetener" field, but the technical route they have chosen - synthetic biology.
Not long ago, Sinovation Ventures completed an investment in Chengdu. The target was a steviol glycoside producer and distributor - Sichuan Yingjia Hesheng Technology Co., Ltd.
What is steviol glycoside?
You must often see many food and beverage products labeled "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories" in convenience stores. The reason why you can taste sweetness on the basis of "0 calories" is the role of "alternative sweeteners". Among all types of alternative sweeteners, steviol glycoside is the one that is closest to "sucrose" in flavor. According to data, its calorific value is only 1/300 of that of sucrose, so it is widely used as the core ingredient of alternative sweeteners.
Currently, China is the largest producer of steviol glycoside in the world, and Yingjia Hesheng is one of the largest steviol glycoside suppliers in China at present.
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The globally limited edition "sweetness factory"
Yingjia Hesheng was established in 2015 and focuses on manufacturing natural products using synthetic biology technology. Its products are widely used in industries such as medicine, medical aesthetics, nutrition and health care, food and beverage. It is a representative enterprise in the synthetic biology track in Tianfu New Area, Chengdu, and has the largest R & D and production platform for natural product synthetic biology in China. The rare steviol glycoside component Rebaudioside I (Rebl) independently developed by it has obtained the GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) certification from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Public data shows that currently only three companies in the world have obtained the GRAS for this component. Yingjia Hesheng is the only Chinese company among them.
Since 2019, Yingjia Hesheng's sweetener products created by synthetic biology technology have successfully entered the US market and joined the global supply chain systems of many well - known international food and beverage companies. At the same time, the company's sales in regions such as the UK and Southeast Asia have also continued to rise, and it is expected to further explore emerging markets such as Japan and South Korea.
In addition to steviol glycoside, Yingjia Hesheng's existing products include Coenzyme Q10, new steviol glycosides, β - Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN for short), vanillin, etc. The company's product pipeline covers multiple fields such as pharmaceuticals, health products, and food.
The recently popular Luo Han Guo is also among them. According to the introduction on Yingjia Hesheng's official website, it is especially friendly to diabetic patients and people pursuing a healthy lifestyle. Luo Han Guo is naturally sweet but does not affect blood sugar levels, making it a safe and suitable choice for diabetic patients, allowing them to consume it with more peace of mind. In addition, it does not cause tooth decay and is very helpful for improving oral health. Moreover, Luo Han Guo also has anti - inflammatory properties, which can help reduce inflammation and contribute to overall health.
However, the most distinctive feature of Yingjia Hesheng is not its position in the "alternative sweetener" field, but the technical route they have chosen - synthetic biology.
Currently, there are two main extraction methods for steviol glycoside. One is to extract it from Stevia rebaudiana using chemical synthesis technology, and the other is to prepare and purify it from microbial products in fermentation tanks.
The advantages and disadvantages of these two technical routes are obvious: the former is very "natural and organic" and conforms to the "green" standard in people's minds. Through various processes such as drying and crushing the leaves of Stevia rebaudiana, steviol glycoside is finally obtained. However, the disadvantage is that it often requires large - scale cultivation of Stevia rebaudiana, and like all plant - based products, it has the same "common problem" - a very high loss rate and extremely low utilization rate - only 10% can be actually used, and the remaining 90% will become waste residue.
As for the latter, it refers to the currently popular synthetic biology technology. Compared with the traditional direct plant extraction method, the cost advantage of using fermentation tanks for synthetic biological production is obvious. According to public data, "the output of steviol glycoside extracted from one fermentation tank can be equivalent to the total amount extracted from thousands of acres of Stevia rebaudiana."
In addition to cost, the synthetic biology route can also solve a key problem: the abundance of many natural products in nature is very low, and it is simply impossible to achieve industrial production through traditional methods. Therefore, choosing synthetic biology technology to develop products is not only because it is a new technology, but more importantly, it is a feasible route that conforms to the PMF principle. Hua Jun, the founder and chairman of Yingjia Hesheng, said in an interview in 2024: "The current annual output value is about 200 million yuan. According to the plan, we strive to put the new factory into use within 2025, and we will strive to achieve an annual output value of 1 billion yuan within 3 years."
However, the disadvantage is that synthetic biology technology is a new "engineering - like technology" based on synthetic biology. China started relatively late in this track. Marked by the official establishment of the "Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology" of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, China's synthetic biology began to systematically become an industrial track, starting around 2008. At the same time, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (NRC) of the United States had already established the second Center for Biobased Renewable Chemicals (CBiRC) at the University of Iowa.
It was not until four years later that the State Council issued the Biological Industry Development Plan, comprehensively planning the development of the biological field from six aspects: medicine, medical science, agriculture, manufacturing, environmental protection, and services. It mentioned:
By 2015, China's biological industry will form a distinctive industrial development capacity, significantly enhance its contribution to economic and social development, and occupy a favorable position in the global industrial competition pattern. By 2020, the biological industry will develop into a pillar industry of the national economy.
Research and improve the fiscal and tax incentive mechanism to guide biological enterprises to increase long - term R & D investment. Through the national venture capital guidance fund, promote the establishment of a number of professional biological industry venture capital institutions engaged in investment at different stages, encourage financial institutions to provide financing support for the development of the biological industry, and guide guarantee institutions to actively provide financing credit enhancement services.
Implement the National Medium - and Long - Term Biotechnology Talent Development Plan (2010 - 2020) and strengthen the cultivation of biotechnology talents. Give full play to the role of institutions of higher learning, and focus on cultivating high - end innovative talents in the biological industry, professional talents in key links of the industrial chain, biotechnology intellectual property talents, international development talents, management talents, and teams.
This is only the starting point at the policy level, and the starting point of industrialization was further postponed:
According to public data, from 2018 to 2020, the total annual investment in the synthetic biology track always hovered in the range of 5 - 10 billion RMB, and the number of companies that received financing each year was around 20.
In 2019, the National Biotechnology Strategic Development Outline was released, and the potential of synthetic biology as a "new blue ocean" began to be recognized. In 2020, Shanghai Kaisai Biotechnology Co., Ltd. was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, becoming the "first synthetic biology stock in China". However, by this time, it had been exactly ten years since the world's first synthetic biology listed company, Amyris, went public. More notably, it had been 17 years since Kaisai's core product, "long - chain dibasic acid", achieved large - scale production - behind this was an investment of hundreds of millions of funds and nearly two decades of R & D and production capacity construction.
Making a horizontal comparison again, according to data from the synthetic biology professional forum SynBioBeta, foreign synthetic biology companies received 7.8 billion US dollars in financing in 2020. At the company level, the scale of single - transaction deals was also considerable. Among them, the largest round of financing raised by National Resilience, Inc. was 800 million US dollars.
But undoubtedly, changes are indeed taking place quietly.
In 2021, the Biosecurity Law of the People's Republic of China and in 2022, the 14th Five - Year Plan for the Development of the Bio - economy and a series of new top - level designs were successively introduced, constructing a institutional foundation and development path for fields such as China's synthetic biology technology from industrial guidance, scientific and technological ethics to biosecurity protection. In that year, driven by the external environment and objective factors, the popularity of the medical application field soared, and the synthetic biology track witnessed an investment boom: the total annual financing exceeded 20 billion yuan, and the number of invested companies doubled compared with 2020, reaching 45. China's synthetic biology field finally showed unprecedented development vitality.
In the field of science and technology, China already has the "973 Program" (National Key Basic Research and Development Program), aiming to solve major scientific problems in national strategic needs and scientific frontier problems that will play an important role in human understanding of the world. It has strategically arranged a R & D funding program for synthetic biology technology, launched a key special project on "synthetic biology" under the National Key R & D Program, and deployed major scientific and technological infrastructure and national - level innovation platforms for synthetic biology in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Shenzhen.
Among them, the breakthrough of the team led by Wang Yong from the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the "de novo synthesis of steviol glycoside compounds in Escherichia coli" significantly increased the yield of key intermediates. This laid the foundation for Yingjia Hesheng to reduce costs by more than 30% later, and Wang Yong himself also serves as a senior executive at Yingjia Hesheng.
Tianfu's "big biology" plan
In the development trajectory of Yingjia Hesheng, "Chengdu", the location of its headquarters, is an important influencing factor that is easily overlooked.
In the development history of the global biomedical industry, site selection has always been a complex and demanding consideration. A large number of cases have proved that only regions with complete development factors such as talent, capital, academic resources, and infrastructure can give rise to competitive industrial clusters - Boston in the United States is one of the most outstanding representatives.
As early as 1846, ether was first publicly demonstrated as an anesthetic at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. By 1869, the first specialized children's hospital in the United States was established in Boston. These firsts established Boston's leading position in medicine, and a large number of talents flocked to Boston. In 1782, Harvard Medical School was established, which was the first medical university in Boston and the third in the United States.
In the following centuries, world - class universities such as Harvard and MIT in the Boston area have continuously provided intellectual resources and scientific research impetus; and many top - level medical centers including the Massachusetts General Hospital not only undertake the function of diagnosis and treatment but also become important platforms for clinical research and technology transformation.
Fast - forwarding to the present. In 2008, the state of Massachusetts where Boston is located launched a life - science incentive plan worth up to 1 billion US dollars; ten years later, in 2018, an additional 623 million US dollars in tax and bond relief support was added. With continuous policy support, Boston has gradually built a strong industrial attraction - as of 2022, 19 of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies have set up their headquarters or R & D centers here, and hundreds of pharmaceutical companies have gathered here.
The well - known American medical and health magazine STAT wrote in praise: "For more than a decade, Boston has been the undisputed center of the world's life - science industry, and no other city can match it. The laboratory space in Boston and Cambridge is larger than anywhere else in the world. Billions of dollars in venture capital have flowed into the area, driving the development of start - ups..."
Steven Holtzman, the CEO of Decibel Therapeutics, an American hearing drug R & D company, said: "... Proximity to basic research at leading universities is necessary, but it is not enough. What we really need to do is establish connections with medical institutions because we are beginning to understand the role of patients.... There are more powerful biomedical institutions here, and this is the key turning point."
It can be said that Boston's success in becoming a global biomedical high - ground is inseparable from the efficient collaboration and systematic support of multiple dimensions including "medical - academic - policy - capital - industry". Without any one of them, the development of enterprises would be extremely difficult.
Boston's successful experience also proves that the development of a region is inseparable from systematic support. In this grand strategy, synthetic biology technology, as an emerging force with broad prospects in the biomedical field, has naturally received high attention from Tianfu New Area and its city - Chengdu. In fact, Chengdu has proactively laid out this track.
The medical and health industry is an advantageous industry in Chengdu. In recent years, Chengdu has taken the construction of industrial circles and strengthening of industrial chains as the starting point, focusing on building a medical and health industry ecosystem represented by the three industrial chains of innovative drugs, high - end medical devices, and high - end diagnosis and treatment. By accelerating the construction of a large number of pharmaceutical professional parks, it has made every effort to promote the high - quality development of the medical and health industry. In 2023, the total scale of Chengdu's medical and health industry reached 350 billion yuan, and it obtained 133 drug marketing approvals, ranking first among major cities in China.
Among them, the Tianfu International Bio - City is a very representative industrial park in Chengdu. It has incubated 6 listed companies in 9 years and is an important medical industry engine in Chengdu and the central and western regions. The Bio - City focuses on five major fields: biotech drugs, chemical innovative drugs, high - performance medical devices, professional outsourcing services, and health services, as well as 18 sub - tracks such as new vaccines, antibody drugs, and blood products, forming an industrial cluster effect: more than 300 projects have been settled in total, with a total investment of more than 140 billion yuan, attracting multinational pharmaceutical companies such as Thermo Fisher and GE Healthcare, as well as local leading enterprises such as Guoyao Rongsheng and Yuandong Biology, and gathering more than 18,000 industrial talents.
On this basis, Chengdu is also one of the new first - tier cities in China that mentions the "synthetic biology" industry the most frequently. For example, the 14th Five - Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long - Range Objectives through the Year 2035 of Chengdu issued in 2021 mentioned:
- Proactively layout cutting - edge technologies such as quantum Internet, terahertz communication, synthetic biology, and brain - like intelligence, and strive for breakthroughs in disruptive technologies...
- Focus on seizing the opportunity in the development of cutting - edge fields, cultivate and develop future industrial clusters such as Beidou satellite chain and synthetic biology, and build a number of new engines for future industrial growth...
In addition, the Chengdu Municipal Government also separately issued the 14th Five - Year Plan for the Development of the Bio - economy in Chengdu, which has multiple descriptions of synthetic biology:
Such as the infinite prospects of synthetic biology in replacing traditional chemical industry. It has even made breakthroughs in the synthetic aspect of the grain starch industry, and more and more synthetic biology companies.