The ‘One Health’ concept: How veterinary diagnostics is aiding COVID-19 detection

I am Eric Sellal. I’m a veterinarian and the CEO of BioSellal. BioSellal is a biotechnology company located in Lyon, in the center of France. The mission of BioSellal is to work mainly on animal health diagnostics for the detection of common viruses and bacteria found in pharmacy animals.

Since a year ago, starting in 2020, we have been working a lot on COVID-19 detection, mainly via real-time PCR. During COVID-19, we have been working on the development and validation of a real-time PCR system for the detection, as I told you before, of COVID-19, but more and more for the specific detection of the variants of COVID-19.

The variants of COVID-19 come from a mutation of the genome of the virus, and these mutations are very specific and they are appearing very quickly. So, we have to speed up processes a lot to be able to have a high level of detection of these new variants, which is very important to managing the spreading of the disease.

In our activities now, we are producing ELISA plates for the detection of the antibody or antigen in different types of samples. In this production, we use the Zoom for the saturation and the stabilization of the antigen, and so for us it is a very important washing step. With the Zoom technology, we are able to produce ELISA tests globally for antibody detection, with high-quality in terms of reproducibility.

Reproducibility and specificity are characteristics that are very important to ensure for the quality of products. With the Zoom, we are able to reach a level of reproducibility CV coefficient of variation of less than 5%. We are absolutely sure about the quality of our product and also the quality of the results.

BioSellal is focusing on the ‘One Health’ concept. The ‘One Health’ concept is, for us, one of the most important goals to achieve in the next year because we understand that a lot of viruses are starting in animals and spreading to humans.

The best example is with coronavirus, with COVID-19, and in our business, we know very well that the coronaviruses are born, let's say, in animals, so mainly in poultry, and now they are very traumatic in terms of infection in the human. So, to create and to understand the link between the animal diseases and the human diseases is fundamental and could help us to quickly manage the detection and the protection of the new virus for humans, and coronavirus could be a very good example.