Alongside three other companies from Israel, Taiwan and Canada the award will allow PBD Biotech to showcase how its innovative phage- based technology could benefit the Saskatchewan and broader Canadian agricultural industry.
“We want to congratulate PBD Biotech on being chosen as one of our 2017 HARVEST programme winners. The goal of this programme is to bring companies with innovative technologies to the Saskatoon Region to add value to the Saskatchewan agriculture industry. The response to this year’s programme was tremendous, with many impressive applications from around the globe. We are looking forward to learning how PBD Biotech’s technology can be utilized in Saskatoon.” said Alex Fallon, President and CEO of SREDA.
PBD Biotech has developed a novel and highly accurate method for rapidly detecting the presence of Mycobacteria in blood, milk and other tissues that may have transformational benefits for both food quality assurance and the control of tuberculosis in animals. This is of particular interest in Canada where there has been a recent outbreak of Bovine TB, resulting in culling and quarantining of thousands of animals with significant implications on animal movement and associated economic loss.
Dr Cath Rees (Chief Scientific Officer) explained: “The technology is totally different from other methods of detecting TB since it can rapidly and sensitively directly detect the presence of live bacteria in the blood of infected animals. No other alternative approach is able to do that. We already have data showing how this technology can have impact on disease control in the UK and we look forward to exploring partnerships to establish similar studies within Canada as a result of this award”.
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