Envisioning the Future of Diagnostics
Sophisticated medical tests could soon be conducted outside labs and major hospitals when molecular diagnostics becomes more common in everyday life.
After releasing its Covid-19 diagnostic test kits in 2020, South Korea-based global biotech company Seegene is setting its sights on expanding the use of molecular diagnostics in everyday life, be it to distinguish between common ailments or understand emerging viruses.
Molecular diagnostics is a step up from previous medical testing because it verifies the exact cause of symptoms from the earliest onset of an infection. Additionally, it aids medical professionals in tailoring customized treatments for each patient.
To run molecular diagnostic tests, sophisticated machines and a customized reagent for diseases are required. By combining its molecular diagnostics expertise with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Seegene aims to create a new diagnostic model that would improve the speed and simplify both the development and testing processes. This new diagnostic model will bring the company a step closer to achieving its most ambitious goal: molecular diagnostics for all.
Seegene is committed to innovation and will continuously challenge itself to build a healthier future for humanity.
Dr. Jong-Yoon Chun, CEO, Seegene
A New Benchmark
Seegene currently offers more than 150 syndromic molecular diagnostic tests for a wide range of infectious diseases, in addition to drug resistance, cancer and hereditary disease. The company’s commitment to continuously upgrade every step of its testing model led it to develop an automated molecular diagnostic reagent development system: the Seegene digitalized development system (SGDDS).
“In the past, if a researcher wanted to develop a new product, he had to make decisions on at least 895 parameters manually, and the whole process could take at least six months. With SGDDS, a researcher can input a desired product specification into the system, and the AI will help design and optimize the reagent. It can even carry out clinical evaluations, making the product development so much easier,” says Dr. Chun.
According to Seegene, SGDDS utilizes 25 proprietary technologies and two decades of data which enables reagents, or the substance that triggers a chemical reaction in a molecular diagnostic test, to be developed in a shorter timeframe.
By applying SGDDS in reagent development, Seegene is one step closer to the wider adoption of molecular diagnostics. “To utilize molecular diagnostics in daily life, the type of diseases that the test can handle should be broader, and it should be able to deal with up-to-date diseases,” adds Dr. Chun.
Seegene hopes to distribute its SGDDS platform worldwide so researchers will be able to develop molecular diagnostic reagents customized to local virus outbreaks quickly.
A Streamlined Process
Molecular diagnostic testing and specimen extraction typically take place at clinical labs and major hospitals. It involves a wide range of processes across several platforms to run syndromic testing – the process that identifies multiple pathogens at once – as well as numerous syndromic assays, or tests to determine the composition of a sample.
Seegene believes it can streamline this process, and it is working to unify these instruments into a single platform that can apply a wide range of syndromic assays.
A single and unified platform could potentially make molecular diagnostic testing faster for hospitals and smaller community clinics which utilize the machine daily. Seegene envisions its molecular diagnostic platform may be compact enough for distribution at the household level, revolutionizing medical testing by making it part of everyday life.
It is the aim that these tests will be made accessible to everyone, whether in the neighborhood clinic or even at home with simple self-testing, all at an affordable cost. With early diagnosis through molecular diagnostics, patients will have a better understanding of their health by sharing the result with their doctors and can seek appropriate treatment.
Dr. Jong-Yoon Chun, CEO, Seegene
A Test for Every Organism
Seegene aims to make its technology accessible to researchers around the world and plans to develop kits that can even diagnose diseases affecting plants and animals instead of just humans.
Molecular diagnostics rely on nucleic acids – known as DNA and RNA – to perform analysis. While this is currently used primarily to test humans, Seegene is working on expanding the scope of such testing to all kinds of organisms across fields ranging from botany to zoology and environmental analysis.
Seegene believes that by creating continuous innovations, with a combination of AI with molecular diagnostics, the company can help create a new testing paradigm and dramatically expand our understanding of the world we live in and its complex past, present, and future of all its inhabitants.
Imagine a technology that can diagnose a potential viral infection even before you feel sick. When molecular diagnostics becomes readily available to people around the world, it may revolutionize how we treat illnesses and prevent the spread of a virus.
Dr. Jong-Yoon Chun, CEO, Seegene
