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Nusantics raises series A funds, develops third-generation COVID-19 test kits
The company is planning to develop a test kit that can detect the coronavirus in a saliva sample as well as optimizing their test kits to be compatible with every PCR machine available in the country.
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Saliva test kit illustration. (Shutterstock/Katy Pack)
G
enomics technology company Nusantics announced it had raised an undisclosed amount of funds in its Series A round to enhance its research and development capability as the company plans to develop third-generation COVID-19 test kits.
The company is planning to develop a test kit that can detect the coronavirus in a saliva sample as well as optimizing their test kits to be compatible with every PCR machine available in the country.
“By using saliva, diagnosing COVID-19 will be more efficient, less painful for the end-user and safer for medical practitioners. Saliva will also make infectious and less-infectious detection possible,” said Nusantics CTO Revata Utama in a statement on Thursday.
He went on to say that Nusantics had developed two generations of COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test kits that have a high sensitivity and specificity rate, which can detect multiple mutations of coronavirus in Indonesia, including the recent United Kingdom strain.
The new round of funding is led by East Ventures, which also backed the company on its seed-funding round in March last year.
Read also: Executive column: 'What we do is not a gimmick': Nusantics
Around the same time as the seed investment, Nusantics was appointed by the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) to develop the first generation test kits. As many as 100,000 test kits were distributed to 19 provinces across Indonesia as part of Indonesia Pasti Bisa, a crowdfunding initiative to produce and distribute the kits.
