Korea’s biopharma firms to unveil COVID-19 test kits for pets

South Korea’s biopharmaceutical companies are set to unveil COVID-19 test kits for pets such as dogs and cats amid reports that animals can catch the virus from their owners.

Protanbio Inc. is currently in the final stage of its clinical trials of a test kit that can detect the virus from the saliva specimen of a cat within 20 minutes. The company said it aims to market the test kit in the first half upon approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

The test kit for pets has already been used to detect a couple of cases while conducting trial tests to obtain government approval.

A dog is said to have tested positive for the coronavirus during a checkup with the test kit at an animal clinic in Gyeonggi Province last week.

On Sunday, the government announced that a kitten was found to have caught the new coronavirus from its owners at a missionary facility in Jinju, South Kyongsang Province.

There have been reports of animals being infected with the virus worldwide.

Cats with COVID have been reported in Britain, Brazil and Japan, while a dog died in Hong Kong last year after testing positive for the virus. No cases involving a spread from animals to people have been reported yet.

“We detected infection cases during trial tests to get approval from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. We had to develop animal antibodies for the test of antigens of cats and dogs,” said Protanbio Chief Executive Cho Je-yoel.

OTHER TEST KIT MAKERS JOIN THE RACE

Other Korean biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are also joining the COVID-19 test kit market.

1drop Inc. plans to produce a portable Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) equipment in the first quarter. The company said the test kit will allow users to get results within 30 minutes unlike traditional PCR-based kits, which take three to six hours to know the result and should be used in a laboratory.

PCR is a method widely used to rapidly make millions to billions of copies of a specific DNA sample, allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplify it to a large enough amount to study in detail.

Sugentech Inc.’s test kit shows the result of nasal antigen tests via a smartphone.

“We’re in the process of obtaining approval of our product from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Union certificate of CE. The diagnostic kit will be exported to countries where people are allowed to use it at home,” said a Sugentech official.

IMMUNOASSAY TEST

Earlier this month, Boditech Med Inc., a developer of in-vitro diagnostics and diagnostic reagents, said it received approval from Korea’s drug safety ministry to export its neutralizing antibody test kits, which show the results within 20 minutes with 95% accuracy.

A neutralizing antibody (NAb) is an antibody that defends a cell from a pathogen or infectious particle by neutralizing any effect it has biologically.

Boditech Med said it will soon apply for the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the US FDA.

“Neutralizing antibody test kits require a quantitative evaluation of antibodies, so it’s harder to develop compared with test kits using other methods. We are currently supplying sample products to foreign distributors,” said a Boditech Med official.

PCL Inc., a local developer and manufacturer of vitro diagnostic medical devices, is already supplying neutralizing antibody test kits for on-site tests and lab tests.

Write to Ju-Hyun Lee at deep@hankyung.com
In-Soo Nam edited this article.