The 18-month old South African company is the first commercial entity in Africa to design and sell local diagnostic recombinant protein for in vitro diagnostics. These can include anything from self-testing systems that monitor blood glucose levels to large-scale screenings for cervical cancer and systems that check blood samples for signs of infections.
BioTech Africa CEO Jason Lurie explains, "With disease, it is not one size fits all. There is regional specificity to a disease and you have different mutations in different areas, so it is very important to validate products against local disease profiles. International companies have not been doing this because Africa is almost an afterthought to them but diagnostics is crucial. Diagnostics is the first line of defence against disease, and so Africa is our first thought."
Warm reception
Lead by Lurie and COO Dr Jenny Leslie, the BioTech Africa team also met Kenya's Ministry of Health Cabinet Secretary, James Macharia was bolstered by the region's collective entrepreneurial spirit, business acumen and determination to work with BioTech Africa in eradicating disease.
Lurie puts this enthusiasm and warm reception down to the company's approach. "We were not there to sell products and then walk away. We were there to talk to people, to find a way to work with them in order to develop the biotechnology sector in the East African region."
Currently the company's catalogue is largely focussed on Africa's most prolific infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, malaria and the water-borne disease typhoid - the latter of which is becoming an increasingly bigger problem in Africa with the continuing growth in urbanisation. In the chronic disease sector, it is largely focussed on oncology and already has numerous oncology-related projects underway.
"That is just the very early stages of our catalogue, I expect our catalogue to grow exponentially over the next year."
While the company initially intends to supply African cities such as Nairobi with finished diagnostic products, the company also intends to set up assembly facilities for full production in each African territory.
"It is an ambitious idea but then again, everything begins with an idea. Until not too long ago, the company itself was just an idea. We had ideas that were refined - like how we could create our own proteins and how to freeze-dry them to keep them stable for use in remote rural areas."
At first, those smart ideas were developed in external laboratories until it completed the construction of its own facility in Cape Town. The demand for its products is so fierce that just a few short months after settling into its own premises it already needs more space.
Ultimately, it intends to build a future where diagnostics are no longer performed in centralised labs on expensive equipment, but at the point of care, as close to the patient as possible, so that the patient can be diagnosed there and then... and treated immediately.
"If we can get close to that, that would really change the whole health paradigm in Africa," concludes Lurie.
