Because of the light, we see the world. Light is our intermediary in understanding the world, and it is also the messenger of matter, derived from the light on matter, which reflects the principles of the physical world. Discovering and understanding the trajectories of photons can help people understand the laws of a certain field of science, but it is difficult to achieve with the naked eye alone.

In Zhongshan Cuiheng New District, there is a national high-tech enterprise-Lightedge Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Lightedge Tech"), through the development and production of scientific instruments, to help people capture the trajectory of light, through fluorescence correlation spectroscopy technology to discover the relationship between photons in time and space, analyze and master the laws in biology, medicine, chemistry, physics and micro-nano science.

Lightedge Tech was founded by Dr. Huang Shaohui, a returnee scientist from Xiaolan, Zhongshan. In 2018, Lightedge Tech successfully developed and launched the world's first desktop fluorescence correlation spectrometer CorTector^TM SX100, breaking the "stuck neck" pattern in the field of high-end scientific research instruments abroad. With its excellent performance, Lightedge Tech's products have been sold to American scientific research institutions and pharmaceutical companies. In 2022, Lightedge Tech ushered in a period of explosive performance, and its customers were mainly top scientific research institutions at home and abroad, and the market structure gradually opened.

Entrepreneurs who come out of the lab

Huang Shaohui has been a bit busy lately. As the products are gradually recognized by the market, the number of customers who need to cooperate with door-to-door demand has gradually increased. In order to further develop the market, he led the team to accelerate the development of new products, while launching the recruitment of new team members, and the daily work schedule was full.

One hand to grasp technology and product research and development, the other hand to grasp market development, now has become Huang Shaohui's familiar work content. However, at the beginning of his business, this scientist who has been engaged in scientific research in the laboratory for more than 30 years is not as calm as he is now, from "doing scientific research" to moving to the front of the enterprise, Huang Shaohui has undergone many changes.

Huang Shaohui's ancestral home is Xiaolan, Zhongshan. In 1989, he entered the Department of Biochemistry of Sun Yat-sen University. In 1993, Huang transferred to the University of Kansas to complete a bachelor's degree in biochemistry. While at the University of Kansas, Huang was exposed to a wealth of experimental projects and eventually stayed in the Department of Molecular Life Sciences at the University of Kansas to pursue a Ph.D. in biochemistry, cellular, and molecular biology.

During his time at the University of Kansas, although Huang Shaohui studied problems in the field of biochemistry, the scientific tools he used on a daily basis were all techniques in the field of physics.

"To do scientific research, tools are important. According to statistics, 1/3 of the Nobel Prizes are related to new scientific research technologies and instruments. Huang Shaohui said that the breadth and depth of scientific research are closely related to scientific research instruments, and new knowledge can be discovered with new tools.

In 1998, with his hobby for scientific research and technology, Shaohui Huang entered the Department of Applied and Engineering Physics of Cornell University in the United States, engaged in postdoctoral research in fluorescence microscopy imaging and fluorescence spectroscopy analysis, and transferred from the field of biochemistry to the field of biophysics.

At Cornell University, he entered a laboratory led by Professor Watt W. Webb, a leading expert in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), to conduct research in the field of multiphoton microscopy and FCS. It was here that Huang Shaohui opened his road of "chasing the light" and laid the foundation for returning to China to start a business later.

FCS is widely used in biology, medicine, chemistry, materials science, drug discovery, photophysics, micro-nanoscience and other fields. As long as it can be fluorescently labeled, FCS can quantitatively analyze the molar concentration, diffusion coefficient/hydrodynamic radius, interaction affinity, molecular conformation, and conformational slew rate of chemical small molecules, biological macromolecules, viruses, nanoparticles, bacteria and other samples in trace solution samples or single living cells.

At Cornell University, Huang Shaohui recognized the charm of FCS, and the seeds of promoting the industrialization of this technology were planted in his heart.

Since then, Shaohui Huang has served as a research assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and as a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where he also serves as the director of the Center for Lung Imaging and Morphology.

In more than 30 years overseas, Huang Shaohui has accumulated rich laboratory research experience. In 2013, Huang Shaohui became an "outstanding introduced technical talent" introduced by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Academician Xu Tao, former director of the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and current executive deputy director of Guangzhou National Laboratory, and returned to China to embark on the road of entrepreneurship, mainly promoting the industrialization of FCS technology.

Break the "stuck neck" situation of high-end scientific research instruments

The road to entrepreneurship is not easy, but Huang Shaohui has always had the heart to contribute to domestic scientific research and innovation.

Huang Shaohui is very concerned about domestic scientific research. He said that according to the Nature Index released by Nature, a top international academic journal in 2022, the three quantitative and quality indicators of scientific research achievements Chinese mainland surpassed the United States for the first time in the number of papers published in the total number of papers, the top 10% of citations and the top 1% of applied papers. However, in sharp contrast to the prosperous and active situation of research results, the R & D and production of domestic high-end scientific research instruments are still in a relatively "blank" stage, and more than 90% of high-end scientific research instruments rely on imports.

As a tool for scientific research, the importance of scientific research instruments is self-evident. In Huang Shaohui's view, such a situation is more unfavorable to domestic scientific research and innovation work, once foreign manufacturers take restrictive measures, domestic scientific research work is very likely to fall into a situation where there is no "device" available.

It is with the original intention of breaking through the "stuck neck" pattern for domestic scientific research work, Huang Shaohui launched the FCS entrepreneurial project to produce and manufacture a domestic FCS instrument - desktop fluorescence correlation spectroscopy single molecule analyzer. In 2017, the investment promotion team of Cuiheng New Area found Huang Shaohui at the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and the two sides finally reached a consensus after communication. Led by Huang Shaohui, Zhongke Aohui eventually settled in the eastern area of Cuiheng New District (Ma On Dao).

From laboratory technology to products, it is the first threshold for Huang Shaohui's team to start a business. Although Huang Shaohui has rich scientific research knowledge and experience, to transform a laboratory technology into a standardized market product, it is necessary to systematically solve the engineering problem of product software and hardware. After the establishment of Zhongke Aohui, Huang Shaohui has successively attracted technical talents in the fields of optics, electronics, mechanics, computing and biology, and independently designed and developed all the software and hardware of the product.

Shaohui Huang (left) and R&D personnel debug product software. Photo courtesy of Southern Photographer Lian Wanqing

With the entrepreneurial support of Cuiheng New District, Lightedge Tech has established nearly 2000,100 square meters of office, R&D and production facilities, built an engineering center and public service platform for high-end scientific research equipment and medical devices, in vitro diagnostic reagent research and development and GMP clean workshop, etc., which provides a material basis for the R&D and production of high-end scientific research instruments and medical device products. After tackling difficulties, the first product of Lightedge Tech, the desktop fluorescence correlation spectroscopy single molecule analyzer CorTector^TM SX100, was finally born in Cuiheng New District. After continuous optimization, at present, CorTector^TM SX200, SX300 and SX99 three generations of products have been developed, and the localization rate of parts has reached more than <>%.

Compared with similar products produced by foreign giants such as Zeiss, PicoQuant and ISS, Lightedge Tech's desktop fluorescence correlation spectrometer is the world's first, with the advantages of simple operation, small size, high cost performance, etc., and is more competitive. The product quickly gained market acceptance. The first customer of Zhongke Aohui is the National Institutes of Health. Since then, top scientific research institutions and enterprises in the United States, such as AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, University of California, San Francisco, and University of Massachusetts Medical School, have also entered the customer list of Zhongke Aohui.

Domestic scientific research institutions have also gradually found Lightedge Tech, and the new domestic customers this year include Tsinghua University, University of Science and Technology of China, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Fudan University, University of Macau, South China University of Technology, Shanghai National Protein Center, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences-Hainan Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory, Zhongshan Drug Innovation Institute and other domestic universities and scientific research institutions. Previous domestic customers also include Peking University, Hunan Normal University, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Oncology and Basic Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangdong Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, etc.

Towards a broader market "blue ocean"

Although the first product gradually gained market recognition, Huang Shaohui's entrepreneurial exploration did not stop there. In his eyes, there is still a long way to go from the launch of the product to the establishment in the market, and it will take hard work to achieve.

Improving the reliability and stability of products and meeting customer needs is the key for Huang Shaohui's team to compete for the market. Take the CorTector^TM SX100 as an example, it has undergone many adjustments and optimizations before finally becoming a "blockbuster" recognized by customers. Stability and ease of use are the two magic weapons of the CorTector^TM SX100. Huang Shaohui said that the optical path correction accuracy of the CorTector^TM SX100 needs to reach 1 micron, which is one-tenth of the hair. When the company's products participated in foreign exhibitions for the first time, after long-distance transportation, the products could not operate normally after being unpacked.

In view of the problem of product stability, Huang Shaohui's team carried out several rounds of optimization and adjustment in industrial design and original device processing accuracy, and finally formed the current stable model. Subsequent products were shipped from China to UCSF, and the optical path accuracy of the instrument products transported internationally changed by less than half a micron. Manual calibration of the optical path of the FCS laboratory prototype used to take 30 minutes to an hour. Now. Fully automatic optical path calibration of the instrument takes only 3 minutes. In addition, FCS experimental data analysis has also been a difficult point in application, and the FCS software independently developed by Lightedge Tech has realized one-click data analysis, which greatly reduces the threshold for the use of FCS technology.

Lightedge Tech Wall of Honor. Photo courtesy of Southern Photographer Lian Wanqing

The CorTector^TM SX series is currently mainly aimed at scientific research. With the in-depth understanding of market demand, the product development vision of Huang Shaohui's team has gradually expanded. At present, Lightedge Tech is cooperating with well-known pharmaceutical companies at home and abroad to develop high-throughput drug screening instruments and provide innovative technologies and instruments for small molecule, live cell and single molecule drug screening. After entering the pharmaceutical field, Lightedge Tech will have a larger market space.

In addition, Lightedge Tech is cooperating with Harvard Medical School to apply single-molecule fluorescence technology to the early detection of Alzheimer's disease markers, which is expected to provide early warning 7 years before the onset of patients. As the problem of aging in China gradually becomes prominent, this will be a new exploration of Lightedge Tech to move towards a new "blue ocean" in the medical testing market.

Although the market has changed a lot, Huang Shaohui's original intention has not changed. For the future, he said that Lightedge Tech will continue to launch more domestic high-end scientific research instruments, provide more independent and reliable tools for domestic scientific research innovation and drug research and development, return to the original intention, and continue to contribute to solving the country's "stuck neck" instrument problem.

Nanfang Daily reporter Lei Haiquan

【Image】Lian Wanqing

【Correspondent】Wang Xiyan