Beijing's unicorn unveils AI-powered platform to revolutionize drug delivery

Beijing-based biotech unicorn METiS TechBio announced on Tuesday the launch of what it calls the world's first AI-powered nano delivery platform, NanoForge, a breakthrough that could reshape how medicines are designed and delivered, paving the way for reprogrammable drugs.

At the launch event in Beijing, company co-founder and CEO Chris Lai compared the technology to aerospace engineering. "NanoForge is like the SpaceX of drug delivery. It is both the rocket that delivers drugs precisely and the satellite that speeds up new drug development. This could solve one of the toughest problems in medicine, which is to get treatments exactly where they need to go, without harming healthy tissue."

Drug delivery has long been one of the biggest challenges in pharmaceuticals. In theory, anti-cancer drugs should only attack tumor cells, and gene therapies should target damaged organs. In reality, however, medicines often get misdirected, intercepted by the immune system, or affect healthy tissues, which reduces effectiveness and causes side effects.

The rollout of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in 2020 proved the potential of lipid nanoparticle systems as delivery vehicles. But making them work across multiple organs and scaling them for broader drug innovation have remained an unsolved "space mission" for the industry.

METiS says NanoForge is its answer. Developed over five years, the platform combines advanced AI models with both computer simulations and lab experiments. It integrates the company's proprietary lipid design algorithms and one of the world's largest lipid nanoparticle libraries, allowing for a full end-to-end process from designing new molecules to testing and refining them in a closed-loop system.

Built on this foundation, METiS has created three core solutions: AiLNP for nucleic acid delivery, AiRNA for mRNA sequence design, and AiTEM for small-molecule drug formulation.

So far, METiS reports that NanoForge has generated more than 10 million lipid structures and collected about 100,000 data points to train its models. The platform has demonstrated targeted delivery in eight types of human organs and tissues, including the liver, lungs, heart, muscles, tumors, the central nervous system, and the gastrointestinal tract.

To protect its lead, the company has filed or secured over 100 patents.

Its drug pipeline now includes more than 10 advanced programs. Seven have been validated in preclinical studies, while four are in clinical trials. The most advanced candidate, an oncology therapy, has reached the pre-NDA stage — the last step before filing for regulatory approval.

"We've shown that combining large-scale AI with both lab experiments and simulations can dramatically boost R&D efficiency," Lai said. "With NanoForge, our goal is to fuel the next wave of drug innovation in China."