Do you know how we can save millions of lives?

We’d save millions of lives each year if vaccines didn’t need refrigeration and distribution in the cold chain.?

One of the spinouts I’m working with has solved this. Jaundiced as we all are with hyperbole, their invention might just be a game-changer. Would you like to know how?

First, what exactly is the cold chain?

You probably noticed an edge of it—a fridge—when you last had a vaccination jab.

The cold chain is a vast global network of regional and sub-regional cold storage facilities, refrigerated planes and vehicles, cold rooms, fridges, and freezers. In remote regions, cold boxes carried by health workers travelling by car, motorcycle, bicycle, donkey, camel, or on foot complete the journey.

The pharmaceutical industry relies on the cold chain to distribute their products from the point of manufacture to the point of use under very carefully controlled temperature conditions.

Why is it needed?

Vaccines often require a cold chain to ensure their stability, efficacy, and safety because they contain biological components that degrade at higher temperatures.?

Maintaining a controlled, cool environment from manufacture to injection in your arm prevents spoilage, preserves the vaccine's potency, and meets regulatory standards.?

This is vital not only for the vaccine to be effective in triggering the desired immune response but also for ensuring it does not cause adverse reactions due to degradation.

How cold is it?

The temperature of the cold chain varies by a surprising amount. For instance:

• Flu vaccines require temperatures between 2°C and 8°C, similar to your your fridge
• Varicella and zoster vaccines require -20°C, similar to your freezer
• Ebola and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccines, and some animal vaccines, require -70°C, similar to literally nothing in your house, and colder than the coldest place on earth today

The ultracold chain, at -70°C or colder, came into existence during the pandemic to distribute mRNA vaccines.

Problem 1: it’s not ubiquitous

First, where the cold chain ends, so does medicine. At least as we understand it in the industrialised world.

As Unicef says, “no cold chain, no immunisation. ”

The WHO states that an additional 1.5 million deaths each year could be avoided if global vaccination coverage improved.

But 80% of the world’s population lives in developing countries that, to varying extents, are challenged to maintain a reliable cold chain.

Worse, for more advanced drugs, it is estimated that only 25 to 30 countries in the world have the infrastructure required to maintain the ultracold cold chain.

The cold chain is certainly not ubiquitous, which is one of the reasons that global vaccination coverage was only 84% in 2022, leaving 20.5 million children vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases.

Problem? 2: it needs lots of power

The World Economic Forum states that “healthcare is responsible for 4.4% of global emissions, and its CO2 footprint is forecast to triple by 2050 if left unchecked.”

To put this into context, the aviation sector accounts for 2-3% of global emissions.

To improve the situation, the WHO recommends that pharmaceutical companies “invest in research and development to ensure better use of medicines, including heat-stable products for hot countries and innovations that simplify packaging and transportation.”

Problem 3: it’s delicate

A temperature increase of just 2 °Cis enough to ruin an entire shipment of biomolecules.

Just how tricky it is to handle vaccines before they get to your arm can be seen by:

• 10-25% vaccines (in some places, up to 50%) are wasted due to failures in the cold chain
• Cold chain failures across all biomolecules cost the pharmaceutical industry $35 billion a year

And this despite each step of the cold chain journey being rigorously monitored and managed, and any handling of vaccines done only by trained medical health professionals.

I think you’ll agree that this is an extraordinarily big problem.

Solution

But what if vaccines could be manufactured that could last for 5 years in temperatures ranging anywhere from -80°C to +50°C? With no ill effects.

What if this could be done with minimal expense and little change to existing manufacturing processes?

Well, this is what EnsiliTech can do.?

Founders Asel Sartbaeva , Aswin Doekhie , Matt Slade , and Stephen Wells are an extraordinary team, and they want to save lives. Millions of lives.

Their ensilication technology is a simple, easily scalable post-production process in which they wrap biologicals in layers of silica for protection outside fridges and freezers.?

Silica is cheap, abundant, bio-compatible, and non-toxic.

As you can imagine, EnsiliTech isn’t alone in trying to crack this problem.?

But—and this is the big but—unlike the alternatives, EnsiliTech’s approach is universal. It works for all vaccines.