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Highlights | When AI Meets Cell-Free Protein Expression, New Drug Development Ushers in a New Era
Release date:
2026-06-10
On June 4–5, the 2026 Pharma Future Summit was held as scheduled at the Kempinski Hotel Suzhou Jinji Lake. During the AI session, Gan Mingzhe, Deputy General Manager of Suzhou Perotin Biotechnology Co., Ltd., delivered a keynote presentation, detailing the integration of cell-free protein expression with artificial intelligence and offering fresh insights to address the industry’s key challenges in AI-driven drug development.
AI is becoming increasingly fast at computation, yet it often falters in the real world.
Currently, AI computing power is advancing rapidly, enabling the rapid generation of vast numbers of protein candidate sequences. However, the lack of experimental data remains the key bottleneck hindering industry progress. Data show that AI achieves prediction accuracy as high as 92% for well‑characterized targets, but this drops sharply to 36% when dealing with novel or unfamiliar targets.
Cell‑based protein expression techniques involve multi‑week cycles, complex workflows, and limited experimental settings, making it difficult to rapidly generate sufficient high‑quality protein data. This bottleneck hinders the efficient operation of the AI‑driven drug discovery “design–synthesize–test–learn” feedback loop, giving rise to a widespread industry challenge: computational modeling proceeds at breakneck speed, while wet‑lab experiments lag behind.
Cell-free technology addresses critical gaps and optimizes the R&D system.
Addressing key industry pain points, Perotin Bio leverages cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) technology to fundamentally disrupt the traditional “cell‑culturing” R&D paradigm. This technology isolates the core components of intracellular protein synthesis and constructs an in vitro transcription‑translation system, eliminating the need for live‑cell cultivation and delivering a qualitative leap in R&D efficiency:
Rapid output : Obtain the target protein in as little as one hour, with the entire process completed on the same day—significantly shortening the timeline compared to the traditional multi-week turnaround.
Highly adaptable: It can produce conventional proteins while overcoming traditional technical challenges such as toxic proteins and multi‑pass transmembrane proteins.
Customizable upgrades: Supports site-specific incorporation of non-canonical amino acids, meeting the demands of differentiated and precision‑driven new drug development.
Easy High-Throughput Automation: Easy to operate, suitable for large-scale, intelligent R&D environments.
AI-plus cell-free fusion bridges the closed loop of new drug discovery.
The deep integration of two cutting-edge technologies has perfectly addressed the industry’s longstanding challenge of imbalanced efficiency between dry‑lab and wet‑lab experiments. Leveraging its rapid validation capabilities, cell‑free technology continuously feeds AI models with real‑world, high‑precision wet‑lab data, fully closing the loop from “AI‑driven design—physical synthesis—experimental validation—algorithmic optimization.” This enables truly end‑to‑end implementation: AI‑designed molecules can be synthesized on demand and rapidly validated.
At present, this innovative model has been implemented across four core application scenarios, covering key areas of innovative drug R&D:
High-throughput validation of large-scale antibody candidates
Overcoming challenges in targeting difficult membrane proteins such as GPCRs
Site-specific conjugation technology empowers the next-generation ADC drug development.
High-throughput screening for enzyme directed evolution
Technology empowers and drives the intelligent upgrade of new drug R&D.
The technical presentations at this summit vividly underscore the immense industry value of integrating cell-free protein expression with artificial intelligence. As these two technologies continue to evolve and their industrial implementation accelerates, they will progressively dismantle the data, efficiency, and technological barriers that have long constrained drug discovery, propelling China’s new‑drug R&D from a traditional experience‑driven approach toward a fully data‑ and intelligence‑powered paradigm.
Looking ahead, Perotin Bio will continue to deepen its expertise in the core field of cell-free protein synthesis, refine its cutting-edge technologies, and enhance its industrialization services. By collaborating with industry partners on joint innovation, the company aims to help China’s biopharmaceutical sector achieve high‑quality, leapfrog development amid the wave of AI‑driven innovation.
We extend our sincere gratitude to the summit’s hosts, BioBAY and the Yao Weilai app, as well as to the organizer, Suzhou Shengjie, for their kind invitation.
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