Congratulations to Xiran Sun on Winning Silver at the First Collegiate Life Sciences Competition Finals

From October 15 to 17, 2026, the First Collegiate Life Sciences Competition Finals were held at Jinan University in Guangzhou, China. Xiran Sun, an undergraduate member of our group, attended the competition with teammates Heyi Wang and Dongran Xu, accompanied by Yibin Sun. Their project, “PrimeTab: An Interpretable Framework for Automated pegRNA Design Driven by Cross-Domain Generalization and In-Context Learning,” received the Silver Award in the undergraduate division of the “AI Gene Editing and Nucleic Acid Tool Design” track, securing second place in the national finals of this division.

Organized by the Open Life Sciences Alliance and jointly hosted by Jinan University and the National University Biopharmaceutical Regional Technology Transfer Center (Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area), the inaugural competition focused on the integration of artificial intelligence and life sciences under the theme “Real Problems, Real Data, Real Breakthroughs.” The competition attracted over 1,000 teams from more than 200 universities across China, with six regional competitions hosted by Tsinghua University, ShanghaiTech University, Wuhan University, Sun Yat-sen University, Sichuan University, and Jilin University. Four major tracks covered AI-driven macromolecular and peptide drug design, gene editing and nucleic acid tool design, virtual screening of small-molecule drugs targeting ion channels and GPCRs, and delivery carrier design. Each track included undergraduate and graduate divisions. Following regional evaluations, 181 teams advanced to the national finals, where 11 Gold Awards, 24 Silver Awards, and 40 Bronze Awards were presented.

The interdisciplinary team, formed independently by three undergraduate students, combined expertise in life sciences and computer science to develop PrimeTab, an automated framework for prime editing guide RNA (pegRNA) design. By incorporating cross-domain generalization and in-context learning, the project explored an automated and interpretable approach to AI-assisted pegRNA design. The project was jointly supervised by Yibin Sun and Haobo Han.

During the finals, the team presented the scientific background, design strategy, technical methods, and research results of their project, followed by discussions with the expert judges and participants from other universities. The competition also featured academic lectures and discussions on recent advances in artificial intelligence, life sciences, and technology transfer, bringing together researchers and students from across China.

(Drafted by Yibin Sun; reviewed by Guanglu Wu)