A domestic knowledge-based company has produced medical products that are considerably cheaper than their foreign counterparts.
Kawsar Biotech Company is geared to meet domestic needs in the fields of medicine, identification and genetic testing kits, according to the company’s CEO.
“The company has been able to produce a strategic medicine, i.e., the production of rabbit polyclonal antibody against human thymus,” Sirous Zeynali was also quoted as saying by the news portal of the Vice Presidency for Science and Technology.
“The medicine has been marketed since the fiscal 2021-22 with the permission of the Food and Drug Administration of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the approval of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education.”
The CEO noted that the company is one of five producers of molecular identification kits in the world.
“In the field of genetic testing, the company has developed a variety of kits for the diagnosis of pregnancy syndromes, male infertility, peripheral joint disease [PJD] and other kinds of human diseases, which are supplied to genetic laboratories and scientific centers,” he added.
Zeynali said the horse identification kit of this company is considered one of the finest domestically produced products in this field.
“Since these kits are effective in diagnosing genetic diseases and determining the genetic identity of people, they are used in genetics and identification laboratories such as police and forensic medicine laboratories,” he said.
“The domestic products’ prices are 4 to 10 times lower than their foreign counterparts. The price of the company’s products is four to eight times higher in the international market.”
Zeynali said the company has more than 70 full-time employees and indirectly employs hundreds of people.
“If supported, the medicine produced by this company can prevent the currency outflow of €6 million from importing similar products annually,” he said.
First-Ever Domestic HCD Detection Kits Developed
A domestic knowledge-based company has produced host cell DNA (HCD) detection kits used to develop different kinds of medicines for the first time in Iran.
All biological medicines are produced in a living cell, and one of the requirements of regulatory organizations for biological medicine is that there should be nothing from the medicine-producing cell, either protein or DNA of the host cell, in the purified medicine, the news portal of Vice Presidency for Science and Technology reported.
Currently, Livogen Pharmed Company produces five dedicated HCD kits for host cell DNA detection for CHO, BHK, SP2/0, E. coli and yeast cell lines, which are the main medicine-producing hosts in the biotechnology industry.
These kits have been optimized based on the sensitive real-time PCR technique and are capable of quantitatively measuring the remaining DNA of the host cell in the medicine.
The domestic kits can compete with their foreign counterparts in terms of detection limit and lowest measurable amount.
Livogen Pharmed Company is the only manufacturer of HCD kits in Iran, which has met domestic needs for this product and reduced the import of HCD kits. It has also succeeded in producing a molecular diagnosis kit for Covid-19, which detects the N and RdRp genes specific to SARS-CoV2 in less than two hours using the Multiplex One-step RT qPCR method.
Molecular tests capable of detecting coronavirus RNA in respiratory samples by RT-PCR have been approved as the gold standard for diagnosing Covid-19 and can detect infection even in asymptomatic carriers in the early days of the virus.
Ramin Fazel, the company’s CEO, said the company is producing different kinds of molecular biology kits, viral diagnostic kits and testing panels for cancer and fungal diseases.
“The company is the only producer of primers and probes in Iran,” he said.
The CEO stated that the knowledge-based company has acquired ISO9001:2015, ISO13485:2016 and ISO17025:2017 certificates, as well as the Food and Drug Organization Good Laboratory Practice license.
“The company’s products are exported to Armenia and Iraq, which buy products such as kits for CHO Extraction, DNA Ladder, Agarose and DNA Extraction,” he said.
Referring to jobs created by the company, Fazel said, “Currently, 80 people with an average age of 30 years and with a Master’s degree are working in the company.”
