Nigerian Biotech Startups Supporting The Covid-19 Fight in Nigeria

Since the entry of the deadly virus, Covid-19, in Nigeria, the Nigerian biotechnology sector has supported the fight against the virus. From improving Covid-19 test kits to providing clinical trials support, these biotech companies are creating meaningful collaborations against Covid-19.

54gene is a gene sequencing startup that launched in 2019 by Abasi Ene-Obong, PhD. The startup was selected for the 2019 winter class of Y combinator (the silicon valley based startup accelerator) and managed to raise $20 million from venture capitalists after launch. Since the entry of Covid19 in Nigeria, 54gene opened up centers for rapid testing and has announced the launch of its Clinical Program Services (CPS) division. The division is in charge of partnering with global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and multilateral health organizations to discover, develop, and commercialize new therapeutic and diagnostic products.

54gene has partnered with Illumina, UNITY Global and Certara to build a world-class gene sequencing facility, examine the link between the use of preventive treatments and the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Covid19 healthcare workers, and oversee clinical trials management in Nigeria respectively.

The Nigerian Institute of Medical Research in Yaba, which partnered with Co-Creation Hub (also in Yaba) to develop a digital tool to aid adherence to Tuberculosis medications in the past, created a partnership with LifeBank, a health logistics startup, to provide COVID-19 drive-in testing centres. They have also developed local RNA kits to support COVID-19 testing.

Recently, Eurekan Biotech announced the development of colorimetric and fluorescent based Nucleic Acid Amplification Test (NAAT) which had received a CE-marking approval for use as a clinical in vitro diagnostic kit and validation from African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases and NCDC’s National Reference Laboratory.