A close associate scientist of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), Professor Bavesh Kana and his team, was among the winners of the 2020/2021 NSTF-South32 Awards which were streamed live from the Awards Gala Dinners held in Cape Town and Johannesburg simultaneously.
Prof Kana, together with his Biomimicry Diagnostic Verification Controls Team at the DSI/NRF Centre of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research, which he leads as director, were awarded the Innovation Award: Corporate Organisation.
The Awards, which are an annual celebration of South African excellence and outstanding contribution to SET and innovation, is a partnership between National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) and South32.
According to Prof Kana, his long-standing relationship with the SAMRC dates back from his early career years where he says was generously supported by the SAMRC’s extramural Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit. Furthermore, for two terms, he was the recipient of the SAMRC Career Development Award and a grantee of the organisation’s Strategic Health Innovation Partnerships (SHIP) programme. “Many of my students have held scholarships through the SAMRC’s Research Capacity Development Division,” said Kana, a NRF C-rated researcher.
At what has come to be known as the “Science Oscars” of South Africa, Prof Kana and his team received the award in recognition of their development of biomimicry-based controls using harmless bacteria. While South Africa and the rest of the world have made encouraging progress in the fight against COVID-19, speedy and accurate testing remains a need – more so, in significant quantities. To ensure that this is achieved, control materials which are often live disease-causing agents are required to determine correctness of the results. However, because these organisms are infectious by their very nature, they cannot be used to verify diagnostics – a challenge Prof Kana says their innovation sought to resolve.
Prof Kana says although they had done this for numerous other diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), the most crucial example today is COVID-19. “When we talk of testing for this virus, we think of labs and test results on the mobile phone – what we call the front end of the process. The question is – how do you know if your results are right and not mixed up with another specimen?” says Kana, adding that there are thousands of tests undertaken daily, which puts a strain on labs.
“For any lab to operate, they need quality assurance systems, good sample handling and proficiency testing. For example, to confirm that a COVID-19 test works, they put a known amount of the virus into the system, and if the diagnostic test the expected result, the lab can operate with confidence that patient swabs will be processed through a high-quality workflow. However, to do this, you need a specimen with live COVID-19 virus, and you need to send this live sample out to laboratories, which is a dangerous prospect. The labs were stuck – how can they implement process controls without dealing with the live virus.”
Kana explains that what he and his team did was simply take a non-infectious soil dwelling bacterium, engineered small bits of the virus genome into this bacterium, then placed it onto small pieces of paper with some dye to create a dried culture spot that can be used by the laboratories to determine if their COVID-19 tests are operating as expected.
Today, the solution is being used in nearly 30 countries globally, saving lives and keeping front line workers safe with intelligent biomimicry instead of live virus.
Other 2020/2021 NSTF-South32 Award winners | Read More