Iranian Bioengineers Produce Novel Kit for Gene Delivery 

“This kit was previously produced only in the United States, but by indigenously producing it, we ended the US monopoly,” Morteza Karimi, the managing director of the knowledge-based company, said.

He said that the domestically-produced kit's price comes out at a one-third of its foreign-made equivalents while at the same quality.

“This knowledge-based company started its activity in the field of providing laboratory services in 2013. In 2021, the management of the group focused its studies on producing  gene transfer kits and was able to locally produce this product in the country in 2022 to break the US monopoly. After six months, with the efforts of the research department of the company, this kit reached the commercialization stage and became ready to be distributed in the domestic market,” Karimi added.

Pointing out that the gene delivery kit is used to introduce genes and biomolecules into cells in the laboratory, Karimi added,  "This kit is used in two fields of cell culture or tissue culture and nanotechnology. It is used in research centers and institutes that work in the field of gene transfer."

"The corresponding American kit is lipofectamine, which is lipid-based. But our kit is carbon-based. It comes out with a specific feature: it can be tracked because it reflects light."

Karimi stated that their production capacity is 5,000 gene transfer kits each year. However, he added that despite the potential to increase the production to 5,000 kits annually, they are currently limited their production capacity to 1,000 kits because they want to assess the overall market demand.

"The distinctive feature of this product over similar foreign products is its structure. This kit has a carbon and ring-shaped structure, which increases the speed of gene transfer," the managing director of the knowledge-based company continued. 

"In the structure of the gene transfer kit, the cytotoxicity of the gene transfer mechanism has been lowered resulting in a decreased probability of cell death. Whereby, we can say that we have managed to lower cytotoxicity by 85% and as a result we can obtain more live cells and have only 15% cytotoxicity."

Karimi further considered the high power of this kit in tracking transfer as another distinctive feature of their product, saying, "This capability to track the transfer helps to asses whether gene transfer is basically effective or not before cell culture or any other thing."

He went on to conclude that their company has not exported its product overseas yet, while they have planned to hit markets in Persian Gulf and Asian countries with thier products.

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