All the colleagues of the International Institute of Technology and Economics wish all readers and friends a happy, happy and healthy New Year. Thank you for your continued attention and support, and look forward to having you with you in the future. We will present a special article "Summary and Prospect of the Annual Science and Technology Development Trend" for nine consecutive days during the Spring Festival, hoping to provide some reference for readers and friends.
1. Summary of the situation in the world biological field in 2023
(1) The United States strengthens the biomedical supply chain, expands its own biomanufacturing, and reduces its dependence on foreign countries
In April 2023, the Strategic Preparedness and Response Administration (ASPR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the National Health Security Strategy 2023-2026. The strategy has three strategic objectives: to strengthen health care and public health systems to prepare for and respond to simultaneous health emergencies, to improve capacity to prevent a range of health security threats, including emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, especially zoonotic diseases, and to ensure a resilient and sustainable public health industry base and supply chain that facilitates the rapid development and deployment of safe medical countermeasures. In June 2023, the White House released the document "Building a Stronger Supply Chain and a More Resilient Economy," proposing to invest in the development of new drug manufacturing processes. The U.S. Senate introduced the Drug Supply Chain Risk Assessment Act, which aims to control and reduce dependence on foreign drugs/APIs, while expanding new domestic biomedical technology products. U.S. lawmakers from both parties introduced the Healthcare Supply Chain Resilience Act, authorizing the White House to negotiate trade deals for medical products and services in an effort to improve healthcare supply chain resilience and reduce U.S. dependence on other countries for critical medical supplies. In July 2023, the U.S. Senate introduced the U.S. Drug Supply Map Act, which aims to create a federal drug database that includes details such as country of origin, quantity, and other critical drug information to help identify and address gaps in the drug supply chain in case of critical drug shortages, thereby better responding to public health threats. In November 2023, HHS announced increased investment in domestic supply chains for essential medicines and medical countermeasures, and has allocated $35 million for key raw materials for the domestic production of sterile injectable drugs, ensuring that the U.S. has the tools and resources it needs to prepare, respond to, and recover from future pandemics, biological threats, and other public health emergencies. In addition, ASPR and the U.S. Department of Commerce are evaluating the supply chain of the country's public health industrial base to identify and address weaknesses and focus on the supply of products and equipment related to influenza vaccines, FDA-designated essential drugs, and biomedical countermeasures.
(2) Breakthroughs in the field of cutting-edge technologies are frequent
In the field of synthetic biology, the American Academy of Engineering and Zhejiang University have achieved the first de novo synthesis of vinblastine precursors in the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae and non-model organism Pichia pastoris; the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences have developed a new technology for efficient biosynthesis of artificial starch and single-cell protein to further reduce the production cost of artificial starch; Harvard Medical School in the United States has designed bacteria that will not be infected with any viruses and will not escape into the natural environment, which can be used to develop synthetic drugs and biofuels; New York University in the United States and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom have produced synthetic DNA super-50% of the "semi-artificial" strains have the same ability to survive and replicate as natural yeast strains. Gene Editing, "Telomeres to Telmeres" The (T2T) consortium has completed the sequencing and assembly of the last Y chromosome of humans, bringing insights into the evolution and variation of different populations, Kyushu University in Japan has produced offspring in two male mice through gene editing, which is expected to use human male skin cells to culture eggs within ten years to achieve same-sex reproduction in humans, the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom has used a CRISPR-Cas gene editing system to design a plasmid that can specifically target gentamicin resistance genes, which is expected to reduce the spread of antibiotic resistance, and Huazhong Agricultural University has developed the world's first RNA-guided miniature programmed nuclease system from the archaeal domain, SisTnpB1It has great potential to develop into a gene editing tool with independent intellectual property rights. In the field of brain science, the National Institutes of Health has drawn and elaborated the most comprehensive map of the genetic, cellular, and structural composition of the human brain and non-human primate brains to date, marking the "beginning of a new era in brain science". Huashan Hospital of Fudan University and ShanghaiTech University have developed a modular multi-stream neural network approach to synthesize Chinese speech directly from invasive neural recordings, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne has developed a brain-spinal interface device that helps patients with paralysis of the arms and legs to stand and walk naturally and promote nerve recovery, and the universities of Linköping, Lund and Gothenburg in Sweden inject enzymes as "assembly molecules" Using human molecules as triggers, the gel has successfully cultivated electrodes in living tissues for the first time, laying the foundation for future treatments of neurological diseases. In the field of stem cells, the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligent Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has constructed a high proportion of embryonic stem cell chimeric monkeys, which is of great significance for the study of primate primitive pluripotency and genetic engineering of non-human primates. The University of Pittsburgh in the United States and Kunming University of Science and Technology in China used a variety of human stem cells to create artificial embryos that closely resemble 14-day-old real embryos; Sustained suppression of leukemia and detectable HIV-1 (HIV-1) was demonstrated during the four-year pause in antiretroviral therapy, and male mouse stem cells were transformed into secondary cells and produced functional egg cells that produce healthy offspring in about 1% of fertilized embryos. In the field of AI+ biology, the University of Oxford has developed a new rapid antibiotic resistance testing method that can feedback the test results within 30 minutes. The McGovern Brain Institute and the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health have developed new search algorithms to identify 188 new rare CRISPR systems in bacterial genomes, Japan's Araya has used ChatGPT as a brain-computer interface to automatically generate email content through voice-corresponding brain waves to complete the operation of replying to emails, and the University of Aix-Marseille in France has developed computational brain modeling technology that can support clinical decision-making and provide a "digital twin" for brain science The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a new protein generation model, FrameDiff, which can generate new proteins from scratch that do not exist in nature without pre-training.
(3) Governments, international organizations, and think tanks around the world have issued warnings about the potential biological weapons risks of AI biotechnology
In June 2023, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found in tests that artificial intelligence systems could help non-scientists design biological weapons. In July 2023, the U.S. Congress introduced the Artificial Intelligence and Biosafety Risk Assessment Act, which calls on the Strategic Preparedness and Response Authority to conduct a risk assessment of AI biotechnology and develop a strategic plan to address potential threats to public health and national security from advances in AI technology. Germany's "Biological and Chemical Weapons Network for Comprehensively Strengthening the Prohibition of Chemical and Biological Weapons Norms" released the report "Artificial Intelligence: and <生物武器公约><化学武器公约>Possible Risks and Benefits", pointing out that artificial intelligence has dual-use characteristics in drug design, synthetic biology and other fields, or can be used to manufacture harmful knowledge, products and technologies, and a legally binding framework is urgently needed to regulate artificial intelligence in the context of biosafety. In October 2023, the U.S. Nuclear Threat Reduction Initiative (NTI) released the report "The Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Life Sciences", pointing out that the deliberate abuse of artificial intelligence and modern bioscience and bioengineering will cause global biological disasters, and proposing the establishment of an international "AI Biological Forum", national governance measures for AI biological capabilities, the implementation of AI model guardrails, and the strengthening of biosafety in the integration nodes of digital design tools and biological systems. The RAND Corporation of the United States released the report "Operational Risks of Artificial Intelligence in Large-scale Biological Attacks" to explore the identification and mitigation of the risks of misuse of artificial intelligence in the context of biological attacks, especially large language models (LLMs), and also pointed out in the report "Machine Learning and Gene Editing Leading Social Evolution" that the combination of machine learning and gene editing brings benefits while bringing risks from ethics to national security, affecting agriculture, medicine, economic competition and national security. In December 2023, WHO announced the proposed membership of its Technical Advisory Group on the Responsible Use of Life Sciences and Dual-Use Research (TAG-RULS DUR), which aims to provide strategic advice to WHO on the responsible use of life science technologies, monitoring and mitigating biological risks, advances in life sciences and related technologies, and management of dual-use research.
2. Trends and prospects in the world biological field in 2024
(1) The regulation and governance of artificial intelligence biotechnology has become an urgent problem to be solved in all countries and regions of the world
The deep convergence of AI and biotechnology has led to a significant increase in the potential for weaponization and biomisuse of biological agents. The emergence of new types of biological and chemical weapons, or the emergence of global biological disasters with more serious and unpredictable consequences, will change the traditional form of biological threats and the concept of future warfare. In addition, low-cost automation and benchtop nucleic acid synthesis technology have impacted the already weak regulatory system. AI biotechnology is pushing the boundaries of security and becoming one of the emerging and major biosecurity risks. Biden's signing of the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, which requires the development of new DNA synthesis screening regulations, the regulation of biodata training models, and the assessment of the potential risks of misusing AI to develop biological weapons, will have a significant impact on the compliant application of AI in biotechnology.
(2) Use artificial intelligence to discover new antibiotics, activate the antibiotic market, and help alleviate the antibiotic resistance crisis
The field of using computational methods to discover and predict potential drug properties is in the ascendant, and artificial intelligence has become an important direction for the development of new antibiotic drugs and the management of antibiotic use. Antibiotic resistance is on the rise worldwide, threatening human health and global health security. The high cost and time-consuming development of new antibiotics hinder the development of new antibiotics, and a few new antibiotics are structurally similar to existing antibiotics. Through the unique advantages of machine learning and image recognition, artificial intelligence can quickly mine massive gene and metabolite data, thereby providing more accurate prediction models to find drug targets, significantly increasing the chance of discovering new small molecule antibiotics and antimicrobial peptides, accurately predicting the antibacterial activity of molecules, greatly accelerating the discovery of new antibiotics, optimizing drug design, reducing the trial and error process, shortening the time of new drug development, and significantly reducing costs, bringing a paradigm shift for antibiotic production.
(3) The transition to climate-smart agrifood systems is the general trend of agriculture in the future
Increasing geopolitical conflicts, climate change and resource degradation pose major challenges to the global food system, further exacerbating global food insecurity. According to FAO's State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023 report, some 691 million to 783 million people worldwide face hunger, and more than 3.1 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. Many international organizations, research institutes and policymakers have incorporated climate-smart agriculture into their agricultural development strategies to strengthen crop resilience and achieve high-quality and efficient agricultural production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, so as to achieve a win-win situation of increasing productivity, enhancing resilience and reducing emissions. At the same time, we will integrate digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data into the agricultural field to improve crop health, optimize agricultural resources, improve agricultural sustainability and resilience, and promote the modernization and intelligence of agricultural industrial and supply chains, so as to help achieve global food security.
(4) Accelerate the R&D and manufacturing of preventive vaccines, and expand the global strategic reserve of vaccines for infectious diseases
Preventive vaccines against infectious diseases play a key role in maintaining public health and national and global public health security. In the post-pandemic era, countries and regions around the world and vaccine manufacturers have increased their emphasis on the R&D and strategic stockpiling of infectious disease vaccines, actively promoted innovative vaccine platforms, and developed new vaccine candidates targeting priority pathogens and virus families with pandemic potential, while improving vaccine accessibility, scalability, and equitable access. For example, the United States continues to inject funding into the Next Generation Vaccines program, the UK Health Security Agency signed an agreement to pre-purchase pandemic vaccines, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Global Health Investment Corporation (GHIC) to collaborate on vaccine development, manufacturing, and storage. In addition, WHO's Vaccine Value Profile (VVP) informs vaccine development priorities and strategic decision-making, and will advance the development of future vaccines against pathogens that pose a significant public health and socioeconomic burden, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
(5) Biosecurity risks are becoming more complex and diversified, which will challenge existing risk assessment mechanisms and regulatory governance mechanisms
Biosecurity involves national security interests and the right of their own countries to speak in international risk governance, and at present, governments are increasingly participating in global biosecurity risk governance and showing their willingness to cooperate to jointly respond to future biological threats. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recommended that the United States expand its health security partnership and establish reliable and continuous communication channels with China on health security issues; the United Kingdom issued a Biosecurity Strategy emphasizing greater cooperation with the United States on biohealth and security; Russia established a new Committee to Respond to Biosecurity Threats and explored the need for constructive collaboration in bilateral and multilateral formats, including under the Biological Weapons Convention, within the framework of the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Editor丨Zheng Shi
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