CONTACT INFORMATION Contact Name: Dr Asel Sartbaeva E-mail: asel@ensilitech.com Website: www.ensilitech.com Funding required: £4.5M Already secured: £750,000
refrigeration equipment producing 6x the NOx and 29x the particulate pollution of the engine providing traction. This produces a significant amount pollution that is extremely harmful to the populations around these transportation routes, with numerous studies citing the adverse effects. THE SOLUTION EnsiliTech have developed a novel chemical method to improve the thermal stability and extend the shelf-life of life-saving vaccines and other biopharmaceuticals. Our ensilication method can be easily incorporated into existing manufacturing processes to encase vaccine components in a protective silica nano-layers, meaning they can be stored and transported at elevated temperatures. Our universal solution enables significant cost savings and environmental benefits for the biopharmaceutical supply chain, as well as reducing vaccine wastage and contributing to vaccine equity by greatly improving access to life-saving medicines globally. ECONOMIC IMPACT The direct and indirect costs associated with cold chain vaccination programs account for up to 80% of the vaccination costs. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates up to 10-25% of vaccines are wasted globally every year, largely due to cold-chain failures. Pharmaceutical manufacturers, NGOs, Governments, and aid-charities will benefit from significantly improved investment efficiency in deploying vaccine programs. SOCIAL IMPACT A temperature-stable vaccine will improve democratised vaccine access to low/middle income countries that suffer from high temperate climates. Ensilication will improve access to life-saving treatments, and improve vaccination rates. This will directly reduce hospitalisation rates and will alleviate healthcare burden. Vaccination directly helps the survivability of children less than five years old, a direct correlation between infant mortality and birth rates has been proven. ENVIRONMENTAL The use of ensilication could reduce the vaccine supply CO 2 output by up to 90%, saving more than 1.5 billion tones of CO 2 every year. By removing vaccine wastage, we can significantly reduce the amount of medicine and packaging wastage, resulting from vaccination programs. Vaccines help reduce antibiotic use, preventing and controlling infectious diseases both in humans and in animal populations, helping to fight against the growth of antimicrobial resistance.
ELEVATOR PITCH Ensilitech have developed a method that can free vaccines and other biopharmaceuticals from cold chain dependence. This will significantly reduce vaccine wastages, energy needed for fridges and freezers, and potentially can save millions of lives worldwide by increasing vaccine availability. THE PROBLEM Many vaccines degrade at room temperature, and so are currently stored and transported at 2-8°C, relying on a global network of fridges known as the cold supply chain. It is extremely expensive, and prone to regular failure, meaning many low- and middle-income countries have poor access to these life-saving products. This is a contributing factor of 10-25% of vaccine being wasted (up to 50% in some countries), and 1.5 million infants still dying from vaccine- preventable diseases every year, globally. The wastages are even higher for mRNA vaccines, which require ultra cold-chain transport and storage of up to -20C or -80C. Developments in mRNA vaccine technologies have sped up since covid-19 pandemic as two covid-19 vaccines, based on mRNA technologies have gained emergency approvals (Pfizer-BioNTec and Moderna covid-19 vaccines). A recent study on CO 2 outputs of mRNA vaccines in Germany has identified that 99% of the CO2 outputs were due to transport and storage, mainly coming from cold-chain maintenance. In 2021 alone it was estimated that 1.53 billion tonnes of CO2 were produced in the transportation and storage of vaccines administered globally. Even focusing on a more local perspective, refrigerated trucks and trailers used to transport cold chain biopharmaceuticals are not beholden to the emissions regulations of regular vehicles, with the motors running the
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