Portfolio Company of Biofund RVC to Provide an Opportunity for Accelerated Testing of Anticoronavirus Medicines and Test Systems

Portfolio Company of Biofund RVC National BioService (NBS) will provide an opportunity for accelerated testing of anti-coronavirus medicines and test systems that Russian developers are working on today. Reducing the duration of preclinical studies and technical testing will be possible through the use of tissue microchips.

National BioService has become the first company to organize the production of tissue microchips in Russia. Microchips are a set of different tissues that are packaged on a unique substrate. Previously, to see how medicine interacts with 60 tissue samples, at least 60 experiments had to be done. Now, this set of tissues can be placed on one microchip and get accurate results in one experiment. On average, it takes several years to develop new vaccines, and medicine development can take up to 10 years. Tissue microchips make it possible to go through some stages of drug testing much faster.

Vitaliy Prutsky, CEO of National BioService: "NBS produces tissue microchips of various designs, including a unique microchip for testing cross-reactivity of antibodies, which allows evaluating the safety of a new medicine. Now, medicine has faced new challenges. We are introducing an almost ready-made tool for quickly responding to medication and test developers. When science and healthcare face urgent and important research tasks of a strategic scale, the NBS invites partners to use their resources and competencies to carry out joint projects".

Mikhail Fedotov, Director of RVC Subsidiary Funds: "About 200 clinical researches using tissue microchips take place annually in the world; their cost ranges from 60 to 120 thousand dollars. It is important that NBS has released a unique domestic product, which at times reduces the cost of research. The project has enough resources to meet the needs of Russian biopharmaceutical companies, which is especially important now, and in the future, to enter the world market".

NBS already fulfills orders of many leading domestic and foreign biopharmaceutical companies, research institutes for the design, production, and use of tissue microchips on its laboratory base. In 2017-18, by the order of N.F.Gamaleya Federal Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, NBS, took an active part in the development of the Russian medicine against Ebola fever. The company conducted a preclinical study of the cross-reactivity of this medicine.

The National BioService is the first Russian wide-profile commercial research biobank. The company is included in the portfolio of Biofund RVC since 2013. It has been a resident of the Skolkovo Technopark since 2015. In 2018, NBS received support under the Road Map Healthnet National Technology Initiative (NTI).