From the assembly line to the black light lab, the automation revolution upstream of the life sciences

People who have done experiments probably can't escape these: writing endless experimental reports, complex experimental instruments, cumbersome experimental data processing, and difficult to repeat experimental results... It has been a bitter "experiment" for too long.

In recent years, these pain points are gradually being broken. In 2019, the University of Liverpool research team invented an AI robot chemist, and in early 2022, it independently discovered a highly active catalyst for the first time, and the laboratory entered a new level of "intelligence". Pull the perspective back home. At the same time, the new coronavirus epidemic has made large-scale nucleic acid testing a necessity for epidemic prevention, and the batch emergence of innovative biomedical companies has also sharply increased the demand for relevant research and development experiments. For this reason, the "unpopular" industry of laboratory automation is heating up rapidly.

The strength of the capital is the most intuitive reflection of the industry heat. Summarizing the institutions that have invested in the laboratory automation industry in the past two years, Sequoia China, Hillhouse Venture Capital, IDG, Qiming Venture Capital, Northern Light Venture Capital, Sinovation Works, Matrix China, Bytejump, Shunwei Capital and other star VCS and war investment have been listed, both TMT funds, and pharmaceutical industry funds. There are also CXO (Wuxi Apptec), biochemical analyzer (Perkinelmer), automation (Bosch) and other fields of industry leaders, everyone smelled the opportunity.

Together, capital and entrepreneurs are launching a laboratory "revolution." In this article, 36kr tries to answer the following questions:

1. Why can laboratory automation become a tuyere in China? Where is the market ceiling?

2, based on product form and landing scene, which segments have opportunities?

3. Is it worth the investment? What are the characteristics of a good target?

First, the emergence of new scenes and old technologies

Through the statistics of the financing data in the past two years, we can intuitively understand that laboratory automation has become a "visible" outlet, behind the rise of demand in addition to investors in the field of innovative drugs and devices "stumble" after a rush to seek a way out of exploration. 36kr summed it up in the following six points:

① The epidemic is a very direct "catalyst". Not only routine clinical diagnosis requires more rapid and accurate test results, but also pays more attention to personnel safety. The high infectivity and pathogenicity of viruses have put forward the most direct demand for the automation of the whole process involving sample processing, inspection and testing, and sample storage. The automation demand in the field of life science has been verified again, and the rigid demand for the automation of relevant staff has become irreversible.

② With the rapid development of downstream applications in life sciences, the laboratory field is also facing great challenges, such as drug research and development and screening, gene sequencing and other popular technologies for massive real-time data and advanced technical methods to increase the demand.

At present, the domestic substitution window period of the life science support industry represented by laboratory instruments. Due to the characteristics of the industry, the customer stickness of the life science support industry is high, and local pharmaceutical companies have long relied on imported products - but the delivery time is often several months, some products are even out of stock, and the price reduction pressure brought by medical insurance negotiations and collection. In order to ensure the safety and stability of the supply chain and low cost, the domestic substitution of upstream products is an inevitable trend.

(4) Because this subdivision track is quite interdisciplinary and has a high threshold for entry, it can form a monopoly on technology or patents, and it can generate relatively stable cash flow at an early stage. At present, the awareness of risk aversion in the whole venture capital circle is enhanced and the desire for "revenue generating" is extremely strong, laboratory automation has become everyone's "heart".

In view of the fact that automation has been relatively mature in industrial, 3C and other fields, we are eager to find landing opportunities in new vertical fields, because the degree of automation is low and the industry ceiling and high added value, the life science field has become a new track that is jointly locked.

⑥ From an incremental point of view, in order to improve the rapid response ability to major epidemics, China has ushered in a boom in the construction of biosafety P2 and P3 laboratories, or will drive tens of thousands of large-scale laboratories to invest in the construction, for laboratory automation and intelligent manufacturers, which is also a huge business opportunity.

Overview of investment and financing in the field of laboratory automation in the past two years (based on publicly available information, 36 kr mapping)