Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, working with collaborators around the world, have demonstrated the effectiveness of a suite of low-cost, portable biotechnology tools designed to improve access to laboratory research and diagnostics in resource-limited settings.
Published in Science Advances, the study highlights how decentralized biomanufacturing tools and freeze-dried reagents can help researchers produce high-value biological materials locally—reducing reliance on fragile international supply chains and expanding access to life sciences innovation globally.
The research was led by Keith Pardee, associate professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, alongside collaborators including Camila González in Bogotá, Colombia, Fernán Federici in Santiago, Chile, and Lindomar Pena in Recife, Brazil.
“For labs in low- and middle-income countries, access to high-quality supplies and equipment is a chronic problem,” says Pardee. “Shipping can take a long time, it’s expensive, and products often require a cold chain to retain their effectiveness. This research is in response to those challenges to develop tools that are more accessible for labs in lower-resource settings and improve research equity.”
Portable cell-free biology in action
The team’s work focuses on synthetic biology and cell-free systems—technologies that isolate and freeze-dry the molecular machinery needed to produce proteins commonly used in life sciences research. Because the reagents are freeze-dried, they can be shipped and stored without refrigeration, then reactivated simply by adding water.
Researchers paired these systems with low-cost, adaptable hardware, including a 3D-printed hand-powered centrifuge developed by postdoctoral fellow Mohammad Simchi. Together, the technologies enabled teams to produce a range of research proteins and diagnostic tools in diverse settings, from conventional laboratories to remote field locations.
Using the platform, researchers successfully produced growth factors used in life sciences research and therapeutics, as well as a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate tested in mice and diagnostic tools targeting several clinically relevant pathogens.
“Our work shows that it is possible to produce high-value bioreagents on site, essentially anywhere,” says Severino Jefferson Ribeiro da Silva, postdoctoral fellow in Pardee’s lab and first author of the study.
“Through this work, we demonstrated our tools across diverse international settings while maintaining performance comparable to commercial products.”
Testing across diverse global settings
A key component of the project involved testing the systems in a variety of environments across Canada and internationally. Da Silva traveled to the Algonquin Highlands to evaluate diagnostic tools for tick-borne pathogens and tuberculosis, while graduate student Quinn Matthews traveled to the Yukon where he produced and purified proteins using the portable system on a mountain outside Whitehorse.
Collaborators in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and India also tested the systems, helping ensure the technologies addressed the practical realities faced by researchers in different regions. The project involved extensive international collaboration, including regular meetings, student exchanges and knowledge sharing among participating teams.
Da Silva says the research team experienced firsthand many of the logistical challenges their collaborators routinely face, including lengthy customs delays and damaged shipments containing critical reagents.
“Those experiences highlighted how dependent many researchers and labs still are on fragile international supply chains. If a shipment is delayed, an entire project can stop,” says da Silva. “This work makes it possible to reduce that dependency by enabling local production of key proteins directly at the point of need.”