Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) systems have been widely used for decades as a rapid and efficient tool in fundamental biology. Without the requirements for cell viability and growth, CFPS systems have distinct advantages over in vivo systems for protein production. Recently, great efforts have been made to further optimize CFPS systems to produce proteins at high yields, reduced cost and increased scale, including simplifying extract preparation procedures, developing new energy regeneration systems to protein synthesis, stabilizing substrate supply and promoting protein folding. Nowadays, CFPS systems are emerging as a powerful platform for industrial and high-throughput production of protein therapeutics, providing an alternative solution to solve problems in biopharmaceutical engineering. Moreover, CFPS systems have been successfully applied to high-throughput drug screening, large-scale protein therapeutics production, custom-made anti-cancer vaccines. These achievements highlight that CFPS systems have great potential for a wide range of applications in biopharmaceutical engineering in the future.