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When Dr Asel Sartbaeva took her baby daughter to be vaccinated, she was surprised when the doctor took the vaccine from a refrigerator as she assumed that it would be warmed up before injection. The doctor explained the need to inject the dose cold.
Dr Sartbaeva, at that point a successful academic, discovered that most vaccines must be stored at between 2-8°C and are transported around the world using a network of refrigerators known as the “cold chain”. Failures in the cold chain remain the main cause of vaccine spoilage.
“I discovered the horrifying statistics that up to 50 per cent of vaccines spoil and that 5 million people, 1.5 million of them infants, are still dying each year from vaccine preventable diseases,” said Dr Sartbaeva, a mother-of-two.
“Some countries are unable to receive life-saving vaccines due to lack of cold chain equipment. We will be able to bring vaccines to places which are inaccessible today.
“The world’s five lowest income countries, all of them in Africa, have barely 10% cold chain coverage, so we will make a huge difference to them.”
Even in the Western world, vaccines get spoiled due to failures in cold storage or transportation, she added.
“According to a Public Health England report in 2020, more than £6 million worth of NHS vaccines spoiled in just one year.”
EnsiliTech, the company founded by Dr Sartbaeva, span out from the University of Bath in 2020. It has developed and patented a silica-based coating for vaccines which eliminates the need for refrigeration when transporting vaccines. The coating grows a shell on top of the biological molecule by mimicking its surface and structure, a process Dr Sartbaeva describes as “ensilication.”
The potential to save millions of lives by transforming global vaccine distribution is clear.
As well as saving millions of lives, EnsiliTech also has the potential to create significant environmental benefits by removing the need for refrigerated equipment and the energy required to power the global cold chain.
The company’s patent attorney, biotech specialist Isobel Finnie, of HLK, said: “Dr Sartbaeva and Ensiltech have developed something that could revolutionise healthcare on the planet, not only for humans, but also for animals. The scale of the issues Ensilitech’s technology is addressing is incredible.
“It’s a privilege to be able to work with a company that is trying to save lives and create a more sustainable world.”
The Bristol-based company has recently secured a contract with one of the world’s largest animal vaccine producers and is working with partners on a new mRNA vaccine. mRNA vaccines use a copy of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) to create an immune response and were the main vaccines used during the UK’s COVID-19 campaign.
Dr Sartbaeva said that protecting her ground-breaking innovations with patents had been “absolutely crucial” to the company’s development.
“When we were raising the first investment, our lead investor did a very thorough due diligence check looking into our patents,” she said.
“When we were signing our first contract our patents were again important because we were able to talk about what elements of the partnership would be covered by whose intellectual property.
“We are applying for two more patents and that is exciting because I know that it’s going to really uplift our company. Our intellectual property is our greatest asset.”
The company is now seeking further investment to achieve its potential. EnsiliTech initially received grants from Innovate UK and the Small Business Research Initiative and raised £865,000 from private investors. This funding runway will end later this year and the company is now seeking to raise a further £3.5 million to continue its vital work.
Dr Sartbaeva said: “The new funding is critical because we want to create bespoke vaccines, fully developed by us, so we can offer a thermally stable vaccine which is completely free of refrigeration.”
We have nominated Dr Sartbaeva and Ensilitech for a 2025 Earthshot Prize, in recognition of the company’s contribution towards a more sustainable world.
* Listen to Asel and Isobel explain the story behind this amazing invention on this episode of our award-winning podcast, Two IPs In A Pod.
Date published: 14 February, 2025
