December 11, 2024 | A trio of publicly traded powerhouse companies—South Korea-based molecular diagnostics company Seegene, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud service provider Microsoft, and global research publisher Springer Nature—are collaborating on an ambitious technology-sharing initiative that aims to better prepare the world for the next pandemic. The partners met in London in October for their first partner roundtable to discuss the future of health security and innovation in diagnostics envisioned by Seegene, reports Jun Kim, executive vice president and global head of the Seegene OneSystem Business behind the initiative.
The foundation for all this is Seegene’s flagship solution, a syndromic real-time PCR technology capable of detecting up to 14 pathogens in a single reaction tube. That level of multiplex testing can be a significant advantage in terms of time and resources, as well as lives saved, during a COVID-style crisis in a highly connected world, Kim says.
It also squares well with the oft-cited vision of Seegene founder and CEO Jong-Yoon Chun, Ph.D., to realize “a world free from all diseases.” Seegene’s multiplex technology is a standout in the market because it tests for a high number of multiple targets simultaneously, provides quantitative information and can be automated to reduce the need for human labor, says Kim. Seegene’s single-tube tests may be designed to cover up to 14 pathogens with overlapping symptoms.
Most commercially available multiplex PCR assays target at most two or three pathogens at once, he points out. PCR testing itself is the gold standard due to its accuracy in detecting a wide range of diseases, based on even trace amounts of a virus or pathogen before the first symptoms appear. It became a household word during the COVID-19 pandemic when sample collection supplies were in particularly high demand.
The new initiative looks to address both geography-specific needs and the potential production hurdles, Kim notes. While Seegene, Microsoft, and Springer Nature are the “three pillars” making the broad technology-sharing initiative possible, ultimately it could involve 100 or more partnerships with experts on the ground developing diagnostic tests tailored to the needs of their communities and getting locally manufactured.
“Early testing is key,” says Kim. “But no one company can do it alone.” There are literally hundreds of infectious diseases with pandemic potential as well as other pathogens that cause global concerns such as human papillomavirus (HPV) that can lead to serious health complications like cervical cancer.
Seegene will be actively looking for other “like-minded and like-spirited” companies in different regions of the world with whom it can partner and share its intellectual property so that they can help create “a global consortium of diagnostic companies based on syndromic technology,” he says.
All the major trends in the world today—including climate change, urbanization, and adoption of a global lifestyle—are anticipated to result in more frequent outbreaks introducing new pathogens and new hosts, says Kim. Preventing future pandemics will require doing things differently and one of them, from Seegene’s perspective, is to “democratize PCR testing ... so that early testing and early diagnosis is the fabric of our lives.”
Microsoft and Springer Nature are “must-have” partners in the technology-sharing initiative, which will help Seegene promote use of its technology for pandemic preparedness and the overall health of communities. “Microsoft makes the operations of this technology-sharing initiative possible, while Springer Nature makes the outcome possible,” as Kim puts it.
“What Microsoft brings to the table is its cloud infrastructure that will allow us to share our tools and technology with external partners,” he says. “What Springer Nature brings is... the ability to create a community of global scientists that are critical to helping us inspire and fund innovative diagnostic product development that might not otherwise get done.” As Seegene broadens use of its technology, Microsoft gets to showcase new use cases for its products while Springer Nature expands the impact on the scientific communities by providing opportunities to commercialize their expertise.
At the recent partner roundtable, the partners showcased a limited but live working portal that demonstrated a reduction “from weeks to minutes” in the time needed to process and analyze relevant information from published scientific literature by integrating Azure Open AI with the research planning module of Seegene Digitalized Development System, says Kim. The two companies also demonstrated a proof of concept for Seegene’s syndromic-based statistical analysis system that leverages Fabric, Microsoft’s AI-driven data integration platform, enabling the discovery of statistical correlations between multiple pathogens causing similar symptoms.
The event was capped off by an Open Innovation Program (OIP) award ceremony honoring eight scientists working in Europe among nine others around the world participating in the development of clinically significant PCR diagnostic assays, says Kim. The OIP is a collaborative effort between Seegene and Springer Nature that launched in 2023 and provides grants for MDx development.
The two companies have since signed a strategic alliance agreement under which they are to provide funding and technology to support researchers across the global scientific community in speeding up PCR diagnostic assay development in important disease areas. They’ll share in the work of identifying and promoting potential partners and co-hosting annual symposia.
The three key partners are in the “ideation stage” currently and will meet again in a regular cadence moving forward, Kim says. A “declaration ceremony” is being planned where strategies for maximizing the synergy between their respective technologies and network will be further outlined.
Tangible development support is coming from leading diagnostic companies Hylabs (Israel) and Werfen (Spain), with whom Seegene has signed partnership agreements creating new companies— Hylabs-Seegene and Werfen-Seegene. “The two companies will develop and market products that are needed locally... [and] Seegene would not have been able to develop because they’re not in our pipeline or not in our bandwidth,” Kim says.
Technology sharing gets underway in the first quarter of 2025. Both Hylabs-Seegene and Werfen-Seegene have a 10-year roadmap wherein each company has 10 or more products it is planning to develop that previously hadn’t been in the strategic plans of Seegene, says Kim. Seegene is now proactively looking for additional partners to join the global network leveraging the company’s syndromic PCR technologies.
Seegene has on its own developed 200 diagnostic products, the majority for human diseases, he adds. The fact that the fledgling technology-sharing initiative already has 17 OIP awardees goes to show how many more diseases out there need a reliable and flexible diagnostic testing platform capable of delivering results in a clinically meaningful timeframe.
“Even Seegene, Hylabs, and Werfen can’t do everything by themselves,” says Kim. “Our involvement of the scientific community says you can help develop products, too, because developing an assay is not just finding the target sequence.”
The OIP awardees will be provided with Seegene instruments, technology, and know-how and, in return, they are expected to obtain patient samples, map out the development timeline, and work with the partnering companies to go through the clinical trial process with their PCR diagnostic assay, he says.
More than 30 Seegene team members are initially providing some regular level of support to OIP awardees, says Kim. But over time, the company’s involvement will lessen as new joint venture companies form and acquire their own identity.
The diagnostics to be developed will have benefits on the personal, population, and global levels, says Kim. In addition to the new pathogens and hosts that are expected, Seegene already sees “small signs” of multi-infection outbreaks that were predicted in the proof-of-concept demonstration with Microsoft’s Fabric at the partner roundtable.
If syndromic PCR technology becomes more pervasive, individuals presenting at healthcare facilities with a co-infection could be diagnosed more efficiently, he continues. Seegene’s multiplex PCR assay covers many target groups, include respiratory, gastrointestinal, and sexually transmitted diseases, among them the HPV14 test identifying 14 high-risk types of human papillomavirus in a single reaction. That breadth of testing could be enlarged to the population level by the creation of a consortium of molecular diagnostic companies offering their own PCR testing options, both helping to squash emerging infections and improving general health by catching and treating problems early.
Outside of the U.S. and even in regions of Europe, PCR testing represents a relatively small proportion of diagnostic testing being done even for some common diseases, Kim says. But momentum is picking up thanks to on-the-ground efforts of Seegene partners who have been campaigning for change.