On November 27, 2020, the project on the programmable oncolytic virus vaccine system and its applications, led by the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, has made remarkable achievement in its industrialization. Synov1.1, the pioneering gene therapy product, has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating solid tumors, including late-stage liver cancer with alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) positive markers. Stage I/IIa clinical studies at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center are scheduled to begin in the near future. Application for clinical trials of the drug in China is also underway.

The deep intersection between information and life has always been an important direction of research in the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University and Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology. The systematic layout encompasses research in the fields of bioinformatics, systems and synthetic biology, and future applications in healthcare and medicine. It explores the principles of artificial control at the molecular level, such as genes and proteins, designs artificial molecular machines through computational assistance, perceives and interprets molecular signals within cells, and achieves precise regulation of cellular functions. In October 2019, Xie Zhen's research group published a paper entitled "Oncolytic adenovirus programmed by synthetic gene circuit for cancer immunotherapy" in Nature Communications, providing a new idea for the rational design and control of gene therapy drugs for tumor targeting, thereby enhancing and further stimulating tumor resisting immunity, while improving the safety of drugs. SynOV1.1 is derived from the original results in synthetic biology research of this group and has become an important milestone for the application of synthetic biology technology in the development of innovative gene therapy drugs.

Schematic diagram of targeted cancer gene therapy drugs programmed by artificial molecular machines

With the strong support of Tsinghua University's policy of integrating industry, academia and research, Xie Zhen's research group has carried out in-depth cooperation with Beijing Syngentech Co., Ltd. in the field of new gene therapy drug research and development, which has accelerated the technology transfer and commercialization, reduced the research and development cost, and highlighted the advantages of closely integrating industry, academia and research.