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ByteDance’s drug unit presents AI-designed therapies at global conferences

ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, is pushing deeper into artificial intelligence with Anew Labs, a drug-discovery unit that has begun presenting its AI-designed therapies…

By Samantha Johnson / May 2, 2026
ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, is pushing deeper into artificial intelligence with Anew Labs, a drug-discovery unit that has begun presenting its AI-designed therapies at international conferences.

The unit – also known as Anew Therapeutics or ByteDance AI Drug Discovery – operates from Shanghai, Singapore and San Jose, California.

Its official website listed 36 core members, as well as big names on its “scientific advisory board”: Liu Yongjun, former president of Innovent Biologics, Ji Ma, a former principal scientist at biotech company Amgen, and Hua Zou, scientific director of protein chemistry at Takeda California.

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In mid-April, Chris Li, head of biology, presented one of Anew Labs’ four pipeline drug candidates at Immunology2026 in Boston, organised by the American Association of Immunologists. The treatment was designed by generative AI for certain autoimmune diseases.

She Yuli, head of data, joined the International Conference on Learning Representations, in late April in Rio de Janeiro, according to She’s LinkedIn post. The conference was a gathering of professionals dedicated to the advancement of deep learning.

ByteDance’s Anew Labs lists 36 core members, as well as big names on its scientific advisory board. Photo: Shutterstock
ByteDance’s Anew Labs lists 36 core members, as well as big names on its scientific advisory board. Photo: Shutterstock

Yu Haoyu, head of computational chemistry, said on LinkedIn that he would be in Barcelona, Spain, for the 2026 Free Energy Workshop, which is for AI chemistry and kicks off on May 4. He planned to present AnewSampling, a framework to reproduce molecular dynamics at the all-atom level.

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