PHOTO: Dr. Dougbeh Chris Nyan
WASHINGTON, DC– The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted Liberian infectious disease scientist, Dr. Dougbeh Christopher Nyan of Shufflex Biomed, a second patent for his invention of a rapid diagnostic test that detects multiple infections in less than an hour.
U.S. Patent No. 11,306,367 was issued to Dr. Nyan for his scientific invention entitled, “Methods for Rapid Detection and identification of Viral Nucleic Acids” of pathogens.
The test adds to Dr. Nyan’s innovative Rapid Multiplex Real-Time Isothermal Amplification Method that specifically detects and simultaneous identifies multiple viral infections in less than an hour using one test. This new patent is viral-specific and applicable to other pathogens in detecting genetic materials such as the RNA and DNA.
“This new patent is a milestone achievement of our hard work and innovation in diagnostics. It adds to our arsenal of tools in detecting and combating infectious diseases, epidemics and pandemics on the African continent and the world. And my team and I are very happy about it,” said Dr. Nyan, a German-trained medical doctor and social activist who also is Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of Shufflex Biomed.
The cutting-edge method developed by Dr. Nyan is fast, easy to perform, portable, and can be used globally as well as affordable for resource challenged settings around the world. Also, whereby several infectious diseases may have similar clinical symptoms, the Nyan-Test is able to detect and differentiate the infections causing the disease.
Dr. Nyan, earned his medical degree from the famous Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Medical Faculty of the Humboldt-University of Berlin. He was trained as a biomedical scientist at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He later worked as a scientist at the Naval Medical Research Center and the US Food and Drug Administration.
“I am very thankful to the governments of the US and Germany for my medical education, scientific training, and urge African governments to create an enabling environment that will utilize and promote science and technology on the continent,” Dr. Nyan mentioned.
He was active in the fight against the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and now in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Dr. Nyan his first patent (U.S. Patent No. 10,072,309) on September 11, 2018 for his invention of the rapid multiplex isothermal amplification diagnostic test which relates to the simultaneous detection and identification of pathogens like HIV, Ebola, Malaria, the Coronaviruses, Dengue, Hepatitis viruses and many more.
His scientific works have been published in reputable peer-reviewed scientific journals such as Nature, the International Journal of Infectious Disease, Clinical Infectious Diseases, and Neuropeptides, and archived at the National Library of Medicine at the NIH.
According to investment analysts of a major Wall Street firms, this second patent adds to Shufflex Biomed’s portfolio and potentially increases the pre-money value of the start-up to a multimillion-dollar company as the Shufflex diagnostic kits are at the pre-production stage.