COVID-19 exposed numerous challenges humanity has yet to address, with one of them being directly related to tackling potential future pandemics.
A key aspect of this is vaccines, which have to be transported in refrigerated units. This allows them to maintain their effectiveness and safety, the so-called “cold chain infrastructure” saving them from becoming unusable. This complex transportation requirement, however, results in millions of people missing out on potentially life-saving vaccines. But does it have to be this complicated?
“Motherhood changes people, irreversibly. For me it was not just becoming a parent, but it also influenced the direction of my research,” Asel Sartbaeva wrote in her 2018 article, ‘Vaccines: The End of the Cold War?’ “When my daughter was only a few days old, I took her to the doctors to be vaccinated with the BCG vaccine (against tuberculosis). The doctor took the vaccine out of the fridge and administered it directly. That’s when I asked: ‘why must vaccines be refrigerated?’ and then the natural follow-up question, ‘can I help to make them stable at room temperatures?’”
Born and raised in Kyrgyzstan, Asel Sartbaeva “currently wears several hats”, as her LinkedIn profile says. She is an award-winning interdisciplinary chemist, Reader in Chemistry (Associate Professor) at the University of Bath, and the first Central Asian to obtain a PhD from University of Cambridge. Sartbaeva is also the CEO and Co-Founder of EnsiliTech, a startup with a technology that allows vaccines and other biopharmaceuticals to be stored and transported at room temperature.
EnsiliTech was launched in 2022 as a project at the University of Bath, and was built on over a decade of Sartbaeva’s research into ensilication – the technique of fitting vaccine components with a silica coat to stop them from spoiling outside of refrigerated temperatures.
In December 2022, EnsiliTech successfully raised £1.2 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round led by Science Angel Syndicate and the Fink Family Office with co-investment from QantX, Elbow Beach Capital, angel investors and Innovate UK. In 2023, the startup won a £1.7 million grant from the British government’s Department of Health and Social Care to develop the first thermally stable mRNA vaccine in the world, to combat Hantavirus, which is found in Asia and South America. In the same year, the new startup attracted their first customer, a Global Top 10 animal vaccine company based in the EU, which paid EnsiliTech to thermally stabilise three of their vaccines. Currently, Ensilitech is planning to licence their ensilcation technology to several customers and internally developing thermally stable vaccines and antibodies.
Along with her scientific and business goals, Sartbaeva is also passionate about the wider participation and girls and the women’s empowerment movement. “We need to show girls that science isn’t boring and is a great choice for girls who have a natural passion for science,” she says.
In 2021, Sartbaeva became the ambassador for UNICEF’s Girls in Science programme, launched in 2020 to empower 500 girls from new settlements and rural areas so they could excel in science, technology, engineering and math, and bolster their career opportunities. Sartbaeva is a role model for young Kyrgyz women interested in science and tech along with many others building their companies in a still hostile, patriarchal world. In 2019, Sartbaeva hosted the team of girls building the first Kyrgyz satellite, who met scientists from the University of Bath. Sartbaeva will return to Bishkek for the Central Asia Startup Cup 2025 tech conference as one of its keynote speakers later this month.
Last month EnsiliTech was awarded a prestigious grant for £1.4 million from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, under the Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Programme. The grant will further support the development and implementation of the startup’s ensilication technology; it will also allow it to explore the potential patient benefits of ensilicated antibody therapies, which allow for subcutaneous rather than intravenous administration, reducing the pressure on healthcare systems and enabling more therapies to be administered in home settings.
The company is now raising a £3.5 million seed round to further refine its revolutionary technology. “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,” Sartbaeva stated earlier this year.
“Removing the dependence [on refrigeration] will have a truly game-changing impact on our ability to distribute vaccines all around the globe, and can help save millions of people.”
