South Africa: SA SME Fund backs Covid-19 testing interventions
The University Technology Fund (UTF) – a co-investment by the Technology Innovation Agency and the SA SME Fund – has invested R13 million ($744,861) in two innovations to curb the spread of Covid-19.
One of the companies that benefits from the UTF is Hyrax Biosciences. The company is known for its contributions to HIV drug resistance testing. It has, however, utilised its Exatype platform to support the analysis of SARS-CoV-2. Exatype is a clinical-grade, disease-agnostic DNA analysis platform that enables the rollout of fully automated genetic diagnostics at scale. This SARS-CoV-2 solution enables end-users to easily analyse SARS-CoV-2 sequence data at scale, with great accuracy and reduces the “hands on time” of analysis from days to hours.
The second beneficiary of the UTF is Cape Bio Pharms, which has commercialised the technology that enables the production of a wide range of recombinant proteins to be expressed in a distant cousin of the tobacco plant – Nicotiana Benthamiana. Essentially each plant becomes a tiny bio-reactor. The focus is on research re-agents and diagnostic proteins for life scientists around the world. Re-agents are the most critical of proteins as they are workhorses of new drug discoveries.
Cape Bio Pharms responded very quickly to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak by securing the genetic sequences to the Spike Protein in February 2020. It successfully created four variants of the antigen using its plant-based expression technology.
The Cape Bio Pharms Spike Protein collection is currently in the final stages of testing and approval by local and international test kit manufacturers and industry bodies. Cape Bio Pharms has already significantly increased the local plant production under a new subsidiary, Cape Biologix Technologies, to be able to produce enough protein for the manufacture of 40 million test kits a month by December 2020.
The vision behind the establishment of the company is to eventually build a plant-based cGMP compliant facility to ensure security of supply of critical pharmaceutical proteins for Africa.
Wayne Stocks, a partner at Stocks and Strauss Fund Manager, fund manager of the UTF says, “Both of these businesses highlight the significant world-class biomedical skills located in our universities, and these investments will allow these institutions to commercialise and scale up their IP. The investment, industry introductions, and guidance from TIA and the SA SME Fund have allowed us, as fund managers, to focus on backing globally relevant technology and teams.”
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