"In the past, it took at least one to two years for a bio company to develop a single protein. Because everything had to be done by hand, testing a few dozen candidates in two weeks was the maximum. But automated equipment can process about 2,000 at once. If a public biofoundry is established in Korea, the burden of paying more than 100 million won per 1,000 candidates to overseas facilities will be resolved."
Lee Dae-hee, a Ph.D. researcher at the National Biofoundry Project Group, said this as he entered the 30-pyeong (roughly 100 square meter) "Biofoundry BETA" lined with experimental equipment, during a meeting with Seoul Economic Daily at the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB) in Daejeon on Nov. 23.
A biofoundry is a core infrastructure that automates and accelerates the entire process of synthetic biology using artificial intelligence (AI) and robots. Just as semiconductors are produced in a foundry, it rapidly cycles through the Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) process for genes, enabling swift production of commercially viable bio solutions. The research results collected in this process are accumulated as standardized data, gradually raising AI's success rate in gene design.
However, the BETA facility currently operated by KRIBB is closer to a preliminary research space for securing core biofoundry-related technologies. The "complete version" — the National Biofoundry Construction Project — began in January last year. The core goal is to complete both a dedicated biofoundry center (4 stories, total floor area of 2,680 pyeong) and an information technology (IT) platform to accumulate experimental data by 2029. Lee Seung-gu, head of the National Biofoundry Project Group, explained, "It amounts to building an integrated infrastructure combining hardware and software."
The project group plans to secure an additional temporary space of around 150 pyeong this year to fill the three-year project gap before completion and meet the demand from companies eligible for support at the BETA facility.
But even after the national biofoundry center is completed, some point out that Korea still faces limits in scale to catch up with biotech powerhouses such as the United States, Japan, and China. This is the aftermath of the project period and budget being sharply reduced after going through multiple preliminary feasibility studies. According to the first preliminary feasibility study report in 2021, the project was originally targeted for a duration of eight years with a total budget of 743.4 billion won, but the final project period was cut to five years and the budget to 126.3 billion won — about one-sixth of the original.
As a result, the infrastructure is insufficient to secure independent technologies across the various industrial fields where synthetic biology can be applied, such as healthcare, food, and energy. Synthetic biology has different processes depending on the application area — △red bio (disease prevention and treatment), △green bio (crops), and △white bio (environment and energy) — and it is difficult to share research equipment across fields.
Regarding this, Lee said, "Animal cells and other microorganisms require separate equipment to prevent contamination," explaining that the reduction in the equipment purchase budget particularly diminished the red bio portion. He added, "We are receiving feedback (related to the construction project) that 'the red sector is weak.' The economic ripple effects that could be created in the future in the medical field are enormous, but it is disappointing that it has been pushed down the priority list simply because 'there is no market' right now."
Due to the budget cuts, the number of "workflows," which are core to research acceleration, has also been halved. A workflow is a standardized work route designed so that each piece of experimental equipment is connected through robotic technology without human intervention, allowing the DBTL cycle to run seamlessly. The project group expects that opening workflows to domestic industry-academia-research researchers and providing high-speed analysis services will significantly shorten research and development (R&D) and commercialization timelines. The project group is currently developing 37 types of workflows.
However, it was confirmed that the original plan was for about 80 types. Lee said, "Initially, we designed about 80 workflows based on demand surveys targeting companies and researchers, but it was not feasible within the actual budget limits." He added, "We narrowed it down to 37 by prioritizing general-purpose functions that can be commonly used across red, green, and white bio fields, such as gene assembly. We aim to provide as diverse services as possible through combinations among each workflow."
From the outset, the main purpose of the national biofoundry is to support the upstream processes (genome design, DNA synthesis, etc.) that are common initial steps for companies, making it difficult to also support downstream (finished product manufacturing) or scale-up (mass production) services. In the long run, building company-specific biofoundries is inevitable. Concerns are being raised that with the workflow functions and scope that the national biofoundry can provide already limited to a basic level, a significant reduction in the number of available workflows could slow down companies' product and solution development.
Ultimately, even after the public biofoundry is built, the task remains of advancing technology evenly across all R&D fields. Last year, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) also pointed out in its report "Analysis of Data-Based Global Research Trends and National Competitiveness in Synthetic Biology," "While biotech-leading countries such as the United States show balanced growth in all fields, Korea's industrial development and applied research tend to be concentrated in the white bio area," adding, "Considering the infinite potential of synthetic biology, there is a need to expand R&D into the green and red bio areas."
