Every dose of vaccine, every bottle of drip, must cross a red line of life - endotoxin testing - before entering the human body. For a long time, global drug endotoxin testing has heavily relied on horseshoe crab reagents. And its raw material comes from the blue blood of the national second-class protected animal horseshoe crab. This "living fossil" that is the same age as dinosaurs is now on the brink of extinction, and a scientific research battle to break the dependence on "blue blood" has quietly begun at Dalian University of Technology. Watching the sharp decline in the number of live blood samples collected by horseshoe crabs, and the fact that drug and equipment testing cannot do without them, we wonder if we can find a new path that does not harm living organisms. ”In September 2023, Wang Qing, a doctoral student from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Dalian University of Technology, witnessed the industry dilemma of the doubling of raw material prices for horseshoe crab reagents and difficulties in the development of local enterprises. Under the guidance of his teacher, he led the formation of an interdisciplinary team covering multiple fields such as machinery, biotechnology, and business management, with the aim of breaking the dependence on "blue blood". In order to identify the pain points in the industry, team members have repeatedly traveled to the horseshoe crab reagent industry chain enterprises, recording and repeatedly discussing from raw material collection to testing processes. After three years of dedicated research, the team has independently developed the world's first "non biological dependent PSO (optical hypersensitive probe) endotoxin detection system". By integrating "blue blood like" peptide molecules on the surface of optical fibers, it achieves precise identification of endotoxins and is the first internationally to achieve 100% non biological endotoxin detection. Our detection speed has increased by 200 times compared to traditional modes, but the testing price has been reduced by 40%, and we have achieved a technological leap in in-situ real-time monitoring, "said Zhang Lei, the team's supervisor and associate professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering. This seemingly ordinary fiber optic cable hides the key to solving difficult problems. It completely eliminates its dependence on horseshoe crab blood. This technology is expected to reduce 100000 horseshoe crab deaths annually, avoid 300000 live horseshoe crab blood collection, and truly achieve a win-win situation between industrial development and ecological protection, "said Wang Qing. The value of scientific research ultimately needs to be implemented on the front line of industry. There is a huge blind spot in traditional offline sampling on the CDMO (Contract Customized Research and Production Organization) production line for new drug development. Once a pot of raw materials is contaminated due to "risk release", the losses can often reach tens of millions of yuan. To meet the practical needs of the CDMO industry, the team independently built a collaborative filtering and noise reduction algorithm, which achieved lossless signal transmission and safety warning under strong background noise, promoting the industry's transition from "offline sampling" to "online full inspection". At present, the PSO system has completed industrial validation in multiple leading new drug research and development enterprises. Wang Qing led the team to accelerate the pace of industry university research transformation and established the company in April 2026. With excellent technology, the company signed core intention orders and made a prepayment of 4.15 million yuan in the early stage, expected to reduce quality control costs by 40% annually for the enterprise. (Looking into the New Era)