Our Business Model

 Bringing new knowledge to existing problemsTM

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Imagine a mother in a remote Nigerian village, a worker in a manufacturing facility in China, or an American tourist in Brazil who becomes sick. Maybe the fever and malaise are caused by a virus and will pass in a day or two. Or, perhaps they are early signs of malaria requiring prompt medical attention. Should the mother, worker or tourist journey to the nearest clinic or local medicine store for the 3-6 hour blood-based laboratory work-up, or gamble that they will soon be feeling better? Now, imagine that they can avoid the dilemma altogether. From their cupboard, they take a cardboard strip and dip it in a tablespoon of urine. If two lines appear on the strip, they are positive for clinical malaria and know instantly that the infection very likely is malaria. Now, further imagine having the UMT as part of the travel kit for the 18 million US travelers who visit malaria endemic countries every year. The UMT will not only remove the guesswork currently used in managing clinical malaria and enable immediate appropriate treatment, it will also help reduce the unnecessary use, and thus cost of treatment. By combining the UMT with readily available and inexpensive yeast-derived artemisinin, Fyodor seeks to assure the convenience, availability and cost-effectiveness of malaria diagnosis and revolutionize the way malaria is diagnosed and treated in the rapidly emerging “frontier” markets, including China, India, Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa and Mediterranean, where malaria is endemic.

Fyodor Biotechnologies Corporation is a privately held, socially-responsible company focused on the research, development and manufacture of innovative diagnostic and biopharmaceutical products, first targeted to large emerging “frontier” markets in Africa, Asia and South America. Our efforts are also intended to galvanize biotechnology-based socio-economic development locally in sub-Saharan Africa, enhancing the region’s competitiveness in both the regional and global biotech marketplace, revolutionizing healthcare in the region and providing Fyodor with a unique competitive advantage.

Fyodor’s mission is to address certain urgent healthcare needs of people in the emerging target economies by matching novel biotechnologies to existing healthcare needs, and then developing and commercializing these relevant technologies to meet those needs. Our specific goal is to expand the availability and affordability of rapid diagnostics and pharmaceuticals, with an initial focus on malaria. Though the immediate needs are regional, our vision for addressing them is global. Fyodor believes that the involvement of a vibrant indigenous-driven private sector is essential to drive and sustain this effort.

Fyodor has two products in development that are intended to markedly impct the way malaria is diagnosed and managed worldwide: (1) a rapid test for the diagnosis of clinical malaria from urine that can be used by untrained persons, and; (2) a novel platform technology for the production of artemisinin in yeast. Artemisinin is the most effective and first-line treatment for clinical malaria. It has been approved by the US FDA, and currently in various phases of clinical development for treatment of breast cancer, Cytomegalovirus in organ transplant patients, and for reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia.

Our lead program is the Urine Malaria Test (UMT) – a next-generation test for the rapid diagnosis of clinical malaria – which offers significant advantages over microscopy and other malaria diagnostics that require the use of blood. In initial preclinical validation testing performed by Johns Hopkins University, the UMT demonstrated high accuracy for the detection of clinical malaria in people with fever. Based on the positive results from the initial validation studies, Fyodor is now initiating further field validation of the improved UMT prototype in a three-way collaboration involving Fyodor Biotechnologies, Johns Hopkins University and the US Army's Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Fyodor Biotechnologies was incorporated in the State of Maryland.