Washington, DC– Infectious disease scientist, Dr. Dougbeh Christopher Nyan has been granted a US Patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a dispatch from the US says.
After approximately two years of review, US Patent No. 10,072,309 was issued to Dr. Nyan for his invention of a rapid multiplex diagnostic test that detects and distinguishes many infectious diseases within ten to forty minutes.
Nyan, a renowned Liberian medical doctor and inventor, has exclusive commercial rights with the US Patent for the rapid isothermal multiplex test that simultaneously detects and identifies variety of bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections.
The patented technology, the Nyan-Test, is capable of detecting and differentiating multiple infections among which are Malaria, Ebola, Yellow fever and Typhoid that have similar symptoms and makes clinical diagnosis a challenge.
The test also detects HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B, C, and E, West Nile virus, Dengue, Lassa fever viruses, West Nile virus, Trypanosoma, and Zika.
“My goal is that this invention will be produced to serve suffering humanity and contribute to the global fight against infectious diseases. You know, infections corrupt the body’s normal biological function, but can be effectively treated through accurate identification; that is what our test does at a rapid speed,” said Dr. Nyan, a US National Institutes of Health-trained scientist and medical doctor trained at the Charité Medical Faculty of the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Dr. Dougbeh Chris Nyan
The test is simple to use and affordable, and drastically cuts down the turnaround time between diagnosis and treatment in less than an hour. It is useful in monitoring blood products, early diagnosis, and surveillance.
Three pilot clinical studies of the test were conducted at the US Food and Drug Administration and published in scientific journals including Nature (Scientific Review) and the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. With the issued US Patent, market analysts project this technology to be a multi-million dollar enterprise in a $33 billion global market for rapid diagnostic test kits.
“At our start-up, Shufflex Biomed, we are raising funds to produce our second version and initiate our field studies in Rwanda, Liberia, Kenya, and Sierra Leone; this will set the path to commercial production, then make our products available to the healthcare community for the needed populations,” Nyan commented.
Nyan is the winner of the 2017 African Innovation Special Prize for Social Impact winner. His technology was recently recognized and exhibited as one of Top 50 Innovations during the 2018 Africa Innovation Summit in Kigali, Rwanda in June this year.
During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Nyan testified before the US Congress in September 2014 and proposed to the US government the establishment of an African Center for Diseases Control and Prevention now located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Nyan emphasized that, “like the United States and Europe do, African governments need to strongly support innovators and provide intellectual property protection in science, technology, medicine, and arts for the Continent so as to safeguard talents, innovations, and African ingenuity.”