Liselo Labs

ABOUT US

Liselo Labs is an African NBIC research and development laboratory.

Liselo Labs Vision

Our vision is to use our multidisciplinary team to build innovative, collaborative, converged and cost effective approaches to real world challenges. Many challenges are side-lined by mainstream, privately funded research programs, and this is where we aim to add value.

Our focus is to deliver solutions predominantly for the benefit of the developing world.

Our Mission

Liselo is focused on unlocking and growing the latent value of African Innovation, through the converged application of technologies including, Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Science, and Cognitive Science (NBIC's).

The Team

Our growing team consists of Microbiologists, Biochemists, Zoologists, Telecommunications experts, Information Systems engineers and Nanotechnology engineers. Members of our team have published more than 50 papers in peer reviewed journals and many more in the popular press. The team represents the core competencies required, to allow Liselo Labs to develop a range of innovative solutions within the developing world context.

SERVICES

Our Labs

Liselo currently operates lab facilities in Pietermartizburg-South Africa, Boston-Massachusetts(USA), Luanda-Angola as well as Mokhotlong-Lesotho.

Research Projects

Liselo has developed a range of IgY based diagnostics and therapeutics targeted at identified agricultural,veterinary and primary health care challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa. This includes the manufacturing of labelled affinity-purified antibodies, used in lab-on-chip based diagnostic kits, as well as antibody based immunotherapies.

A recent addition to our team is the inclusion of a Mobile App development division, focusing on integrating our various solutions into convenient Mobile based tools.

Liselo is currently testing our range of snake antivenin products, that could provide a lower cost alternative to horse derived products, with no risk of anaphylaxis complications. Research is underway to develop a rapid lab-on-chip test kit to identify which snake venom is present in an envenomed patient for Sub-Saharan venomous snakes.

We have developed a number of immunotherapy candidate products for the following diseases which are currently undergoing testing:

• African Horse Sickness Virus
• Mycobacterium turberculosis
• Yellow Fever Virus
• Rabies Virus

Liselo has established collaborations with the Lesotho Department of Agriculture, the North West Agriculture department in South Africa, as well as the Entomology Department at the University of the North West. The project is currently co-coordinating the introduction of Quinoa to Lesotho, and the development of a pathogen free seed-bank for the SADC region. Liselo has also partnered with the African Horse sickness trust and is building a range of tools to better manage the neglected disease.

Liselo, in collaboration with other universities and institutions around the world, has also developed a test kit platform, resulting in a number of rapid point-of-care diagnostics kits including a range of:

• Arboviruses of relevance to Mammalian hosts.
• Other arthropod vectored pathogens.
• Plant arthropod pests of economic importance.

Custom In Vitro Diagnostic (IVD) device design.

Liselo has partnered with key stakeholders in disease and pest management to provide custom IVD's to assist with identification, intervention management and reporting.

A smartphone app has been developed to assist users of Liselo IVD's to use the kits, process the results, and report the results.

Products in the Market

Mipha® is a free One Health application for mobile devices that harnesses the power of smartphones, rapid diagnostic home/field test kits (IVD’s), and multi-stakeholder engagement in the management of the burden of disease. Mipha® is an acronym for “Mi Professional Health Assistant” and it is aimed at holding the hand of the entry level smartphone user, to be able to use an IVD to test for presence of disease biomarkers, capture the result, and report these results into secure online servers.

The plan for Mipha® is to incrementally add as many sensitivity and specificity verified IVD’s to aid in screening and testing of multiple viruses, bacteria, toxins, fungi, and other relevant biomarkers, in Humans, other animals including insects, plants and the environment. This will allow large scale epidemiological surveillance of identified diseases and outbreaks, reported real-time to the database for stakeholder engagement. Mipha®represents the world’s first One Health App that integrates IVD’s with an App for training, result processing, reporting and outbreak monitoring/surveillance.

Current supported kits are for the detection of; African Horse Sickness, Malaria, Syphilis, Rabies, Avian Influenza, HIV, Pregnancy, Fall Armyworm, with many more to come including:

Ebola virus, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, Porcine Circovirus, African snake bite venoms, West Nile virus, Equine Encephalosis virus, Equine Hemorrhagic Disease virus, Bluetongue virus, Yellow Fever, Zika, Dengue Fever and Shuni virus amongst others.

Commercial Service for Custom Antibody Production

Liselo is able to manufacture polyclonal IgY antibodies against a very broad range of target antigens on demand.

Customer supplied antigens, can be used to generate custom antibodies (Ab's) within 6-8 weeks, in quantities ranging from 100mg to 10g.