Food bio-preservation is a key strategic focus for Bota in niche markets, and the commencement of the Phase II Agile BioFab Expansion marks a significant step forward in Bota’s growth in this area. The project will leverage cutting-edge biomanufacturing technologies to drive the transformation and upgrade of traditional industries, enhancing product offerings and advancing capabilities in customized application development. Bota remains committed to its core values of innovation, sustainability, and green development, aiming to provide safer, more efficient, and eco-friendly solutions for the food industry while contributing to the sector’s high-quality growth.

The commencement of this manufacturing base project underscores Bota’s unwavering commitment to accelerating value chain integration and driving high-quality regional economic development. Moving forward, Bota will continue to enhance its R&D capabilities and promote the broader application of biomanufacturing technologies, aiming to deliver robust support for the green transition and sustainable advancement of the food industry.

Dr. Cheryl Cui, co-founder and CEO of Bota Biosciences, was invited to speak at the “Letting Biotech Breathe” panel on June 26 and the “Next Steps from Chinese Innovators” panel on June 27. During these sessions, she explored current trends and future directions in technological innovations that are crucial for advancing a bio-circular economy.

Dr. Cheryl Cui, CEO and co-founder of Bota Biosciences

In the discussions, Dr. Cui highlighted the transformative power of biotechnology across various industries, from consumer goods to environmental protection. She shared her vision of biotechnological transformation as a catalyst for innovation that will revolutionize manufacturing processes and eventually become an integral part of people’s daily lives. She stressed that leveraging talent is essential for harnessing technology to address real-world challenges. Entrepreneurs and business leaders should bring together talents with aligned visions, create an environment of mutual trust and collaboratively solve interesting and practically valuable problems.

Also, Dr. Cui shared insights on how biotechnological companies can navigate the rapidly evolving technological landscapes. She noted that Bota stays abreast of emerging technological trends, striving to seamlessly integrate new technologies with the complexities of biology for innovative solutions. She believes that significant breakthroughs in biomanufacturing can be achieved through the intersection between biotechnology and information technology.

Despite the uncertainties facing the world, the vitality, foresight, and collaborative spirit among innovators are the key drivers of technological advancement and societal development. Bota will continue to play a significant role in this process, contributing to sustainable development and fostering a circular economy.

About Bota Biosciences

Bota Biosciences is a global leader in Physical AI-driven biomanufacturing, dedicated to making biotechnology a reliable and scalable engine of productivity. By integrating end-to-end capabilities in AI, synthetic biology, and industrialization, Bota pioneers a new paradigm in biomanufacturing research and production. Our world-leading Physical-AI driven biofoundry platform spans strain engineering, process development, and scale-up production—translating complex biology into scalable solutions for diverse industries, from food and nutrition to personal care and beyond. Bota partners with global customers to deliver greener, more efficient bio-solutions, accelerating industry-wide adoption and the transition to a sustainable future.

As one of the most influential exhibitions in China’s food industry, FIC 2024 attracted over 1,500 exhibitors, covering more than 100,000 square meters of exhibition space, and welcomed over 150,000 professional buyers and industry experts from around the world. The event served as a vital platform for showcasing the latest products and technologies, as well as facilitating international collaboration and exchange.

At the exhibition, Bota highlighted its innovative series of natural shelf life extenders. These products are derived through microbial fermentation, featuring environmentally friendly production processes. With their natural, safe, and chemical-free properties, Bota’s natural shelf life extenders cater to the growing consumer demand for clean-label food products. The products have demonstrated outstanding effectiveness in extending the shelf life of various food products, while Bota’s strong capacity for customized application development has attracted considerable interest from industry experts. To date, Bota’s natural shelf-life extenders have been successfully applied in processed meats, dairy products, beverages, and starch-based foods, highlighting their substantial market potential.

Leveraging its end-to-end biotechnology platform, Bota showcased its robust R&D background and reliable supply chain capabilities at the exhibition. Looking ahead, Bota plans to further increase its investment in research and development, continuously introducing innovative shelf life extender products to meet the global food industry’s demands for safety, natural ingredients, and sustainable development.

Bota Biosciences (Bota) is a global industrial biotechnology company connecting biological design to scale-up manufacturing to accelerate shifts to sustainable living. Bota has built an integrative bioengineering platform, to develop and implement efficient, eco-friendly, and cost-effective biomanufacturing technologies. Committed to its mission, Bota established its own pilot plant and manufacturing facility, affirming its dedication to offering scalable industrial solutions and market-ready products. This infrastructure strengthens support for customers and partners across industries such as nutrition, food, personal care, and animal health.

On January 18th, Dr. Cheryl Cui, Co-Founder and CEO of Bota Biosciences, joined speakers including Novozymes CEO Ester Baiget, Clariant CEO Conard Keijzer, and WIPO Director-General Daren Tang, in a panel discussion titled ‘Bio-based Path to Net Zero’. This panel was moderated by Editor-in-Chief of Nature, Magdalena Skipper and they discussed the opportunities and challenges of biomanufacturing for sustainable lifestyles and carbon neutrality.

Dr. Cheryl Cui highlighted the sustainability and safety of biomanufacturing over traditional chemical methods, while noting challenges in application, accessibility, and affordability. Addressing these challenges, Dr. Cui emphasized that Bota, as the leading industrial biotech company, will step out of the comfort zone, understand the consumer’s needs, and enhance the accessibility of biotechnology in the daily life. This will require more strategic partnerships and closer collaboration in the product value chain.

The panel highlighted the essential role of biomanufacturing and its challenges in tackling climate change and shifting towars sustainable lifestyle. It delved into different strategies for surmounting these challenges, such as enhancing consumer transparency and advocating for worldwide regulatory changes. Moving forward, it is crucial for the industry and government to build multi-tier collaboration and deliver on bio-based solutions to effectively address and overcome global environmental hurdles.

As Dr. Cheryl Cui said at the end of the panel, “Concerted efforts and a shared vision are essential. We are dedicated to making biotechnology more accessible in everyone’s daily life. This commitment defines Bota’s vision and direction.” Bota Bio is poised at the forefront of the biotech revolution, playing a pivotal role in shaping a more sustainable world.

Rationale: Bota boasts the world’s leading computation-driven biofoundry, seamlessly integrating machine learning and bioinformatics with the systematic engineering of biology. In this way, it can provide innovative solutions for industries such as chemicals, food, agriculture, and pharmaceuticals.

Keyword: 1,000,000+ throughput /year

Utilizing the cloud-based wet laboratory with online remote control and automated equipment, it can execute experiments, including strain construction, testing, and data collection, with over a million samples annually.

About MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review was founded in 1899 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. It’s the oldest and the most influential technology and business magazine in the world. Since 2010, MIT Technology Review has annually named a list of Smartest Companies. In 2019, MIT Technology Review introduced the concept of “China Pivot” for the first time. Continuing the stance and values of the previous year, the list of 2020 was based on the concept of “China Cohesion”. MIT Technology Review believed that by emphasizing China as a cornerstone for emerging technologies, it could effectively assess the commercial capabilities and future potential generated by this leverage.

About Bota Biosciences

Bota Biosciences is a global leader in Physical AI-driven biomanufacturing, dedicated to making biotechnology a reliable and scalable engine of productivity. By integrating end-to-end capabilities in AI, synthetic biology, and industrialization, Bota pioneers a new paradigm in biomanufacturing research and production. Our world-leading Physical-AI driven biofoundry platform spans strain engineering, process development, and scale-up production—translating complex biology into scalable solutions for diverse industries, from food and nutrition to personal care and beyond. Bota partners with global customers to deliver greener, more efficient bio-solutions, accelerating industry-wide adoption and the transition to a sustainable future.

C&EN has run an annual list of 10 start-ups in chemistry-related fields that worth watching since 2015. Typically, these selections are recommended and decided by readers and followers, while some arise from emerging projects discovered during interviews conducted by the website. Notably, many previously selected companies have gone on to receive significant attention and financing.

This year’s selection focuses on the keywords of low carbonfootprint,green, and sustainability, strongly advocating a discussion on how scientific and technological progress can maintain the balance of protecting the earth while developing the economy. Bota is committed to designing and regulating biological systems using synthetic biology technology and producing biobased products that are greener and more efficient than traditional processes through biomanufacturing. This mirrors the core concept of the selection.

Meanwhile, Bota’s R&D philosophy focuses on the final product itself. By establishing a new IT system that supports the entire development cycle, it will accelerate the commencement of downstream process development and large-scale fermentation stage, thereby shortening the gap between laboratory scale and large-scale fermentation. Bota is committed to finding better biomanufacturing solutions for the sustainable future,by usingsynthetic biology as the underlying driving tool combined withcross-disciplinary cooperation.

• Series B financing led by Sequoia Capital China brings total funding to $145M

SAN FRANCISCO and HANGZHOU, China, July 29, 2021 Bota, a global industrial biotechnology company advancing sustainable biomanufacturing, today announced that it has raised more than $100 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round. The financing was led by Sequoia Capital China. Other investors included previous backers Matrix Partners China, Source Code Capital, Sherpa Healthcare Partners, and 5Y Capital, among others. This Series B financing brings Bota’s total funding to $145 million to date.

The new funds will be used to expand the company’s global operations and build out Bota’s lab-to-pilot scale platform to facilitate the rapid scale-up and deployment of the company’s product pipeline in consumer goods, food, nutrition, and pharmaceutical products.

“Most traditional manufacturing comes with a high environmental cost. We are building Bota to innovate solutions that help manufacturers in all industries leverage the power of biology to accelerate the design and scale-up of high-performance products using sustainable processes,” said Cheryl Cui, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO, Bota. “We are empowering a diverse global client base from different industries to develop bio-based alternatives to traditional ingredients. We are thrilled to have this syndicate of renowned investors support our efforts in transforming global manufacturing.”

“Bota is rapidly delivering bio-based and biologically produced products at scale to replace fossil-fuel-based, energy-intensive products and processes with biologically produced sustainable alternatives,” said Neil Shen, founding and managing partner, Sequoia Capital China. “The Bota team has developed a leading integrated platform to bring innovative and efficient solutions to market for their partners. We are confident that Bota will keep enhancing their ability to accelerate the development of bio-based products, creating more value for consumers, while contributing to sustainability on a global scale.”

Bota was founded in 2019 by a team of scientists and industry experts with proven track records in successfully developing and delivering industrial-scale bio-based products to market. The company has developed and deployed a technology platform known as the Bota Freeway that integrates advanced digital tools with lab automation. Bota has also expanded synthetic biology’s design-build-test-learn cycle to include downstream process development and select non-traditional microbial strains, accelerating the design and evolution of enzymes and cell-based factories.

Bota previously announced its strategic investment led by BASF Venture Capital (BVC), the corporate venture arm of BASF Group, one of the world’s leading chemical companies. BASF joined forces with Bota to bring sustainably produced ingredients to market.

About Bota Biosciences

Bota Biosciences is a global leader in Physical AI-driven biomanufacturing, dedicated to making biotechnology a reliable and scalable engine of productivity. By integrating end-to-end capabilities in AI, synthetic biology, and industrialization, Bota pioneers a new paradigm in biomanufacturing research and production. Our world-leading Physical-AI driven biofoundry platform spans strain engineering, process development, and scale-up production—translating complex biology into scalable solutions for diverse industries, from food and nutrition to personal care and beyond. Bota partners with global customers to deliver greener, more efficient bio-solutions, accelerating industry-wide adoption and the transition to a sustainable future.

愿景与使命

The new R&D center further enhances capabilities from biological design to industrial production.

On August 8, 2023, Bota Bio celebrated the Opening Ceremony at the LEAP (Laboratory for Engineering Automation and Process Development) R&D center located in Qiantang Medical Port Town, Hangzhou. Government leaders, investors, and industry experts were invited to witness this significant milestone.

The construction of LEAP commanded exceeding 100 million RMB, covering an expansive floor area of 5,300 square meters. LEAP will further accelerate the validation of scientists’ ideas, covering the full cycle from biological design to scale-up to daily life. LEAP’s pilot plant has two 1,000L and four 500L automated pilot lines. Equipped with a modular downstream purification unit, the processes of scale-up from the laboratory for different types of products can be accelerated, providing a reliable cost model for establishing industrial production lines.

In the opening ceremony, Bota unveiled its wholly-owned subsidiary, Yucca Elements, and showcased its first biobased personal care ingredient product – Prorylia™ FN . This innovative product effectively soothes sensitive skin and reinforces the skin’s protective barrier. With the support of Bota’s technology platform and industrial production capacity, Yucca Elements swiftly brings its products to market. It replaces the energy-intensive and environmentally harmful petroleum-based process with a green and clean biological manufacturing method. It provides efficient, eco-friendly, and safe solutions for the beauty and personal care industry.

Besides its application in the beauty and personal care industry, Bota also shared cases and ideas about applying biomanufacturing in sustainable daily life during the event. Meanwhile, the company also elaborated on its philosophy of creating value. Cheryl Cui, co-founder and CEO of Bota, said, “With everyone’s support and witness, Bota will continue to deliver optimal biomanufacturing solutions and products for multiple application fields based on actual demand. I sincerely hope that Bota can expand the collaboration, deliver on nature’s possibilities, and continuously evolve. Future to be seen.”