@BIOASTER: in working order to take part in the fight against the Covid-19

Bioaster and Covid-19

As of today, our current ongoing activities within the Institute have been further reduced, or even completely stopped in order to:

  • facilitate the work of hospitals and care centers by reducing our need for vital resources today for them and their patients.
  • be able to have the maximum technological strength and resources for all requests on “Covid-19” projects

If BIOASTER already naturally contributes to the reflection on several European research projects, the Foundation is fully in working order to respond:

  • at the request of academic partners – validation of concepts, co-partnership on research projects, in particular diagnostics and vaccines, contribution of additional technological brick, link with production companies, subcontracting
  • to questions from industry – accelerate product developments, provide a quality response, robust to industrial standards, from sample to data, or offer an innovative technological approach, necessary to break down technological barriers faster and speed up rapid dissemination and broad to the patient of diagnoses or vaccines.

For example:

We have a technology developed in-house (Bind-It) for the custom development of binding proteins: it could allow the rapid selection and production of reagents for diagnosis (in around 2 months, compared to the 6 months required for the development of monoclonal antibodies) and anti-SARS-COV2 therapeutic strategies.

We have designed and patented a new rapid diagnostic test technology, based on the use of generic cassettes (which can be mass produced at low cost and which offer flexibility in adapting to new pathogens). This can serve as a basis for the development of a rapid field test (similar to the pregnancy test) confirming the immune response against COV2 post confinement and / or a multiplex field test allowing to discriminate between Covid-19, seasonal flu or others. virus causing close symptoms (eg RSV), with great flexibility, which can adapt to the clinical context that hospitals will face over the next winter.

More generally, BIOASTER has the capacity to be a centralized platform for the validation of diagnostic tests from the industrial world. The validation of these tests requires technological capacities, which we have, and an organizational capacity, that we have already demonstrated in large-scale projects with industrialists.  “History has shown us that it can be difficult to understand, from the emergence of a new pathogen, the extent of its health impact on the world’s population. The collective response to such threats is measured by speed of action, agility, resilience and our ability to move quickly and efficiently from the idea to the diagnosis for everyone, to the vaccine for all and to treatments for those affected. We are organizing ourselves so that, in the weeks and months to come, our unique model of collaboration, our experts, resources, infrastructures, laboratories and innovative technologies contribute via collaborative or internal projects to attenuate the wave that strikes us today, and check the next one. We are ready and determined that such unpredictable crises can be controlled, limited and prevented through new prophylactic, diagnostic, therapeutic and vaccine tools and solutions capitalizing on academic research, technological innovation, partnership with businesses, but above all, by the desire to innovate, together.” Says Nathalie Garçon, CEO & CSO BIOASTER  BIOASTER wants to make a major contribution to the fight against Covid-19 by playing its role as designed by the Government in 2012, that is to say to serve as an interface between manufacturers and hospitals and academic laboratories, benefit of citizens and patients.

BIOASTER was created in 2012 as part of the Government’s initiative to create Technological Research Institutes. BIOASTER develops and uses innovative technologies in microbiology and infectiology, to derisk and accelerate the marketing of new health products (diagnostics, treatments, vaccines, etc.).

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