More than 100 sustainably upcycled thermal cyclers have supported research in the global STEM community since 2019
Drs. Melissa Wu and Abebaw Fekadu Wassie can tell you a lot of stories about the number 80.
Here’s one: about 80% of the world’s population lives in low- and middle-income countries, yet 80% of research grant funding is spent by just 10 countries in the world.
And another: close to 80% of mortality across Africa stems from a lack of access to essential medications. But 80% of African countries lack therapeutic R&D capacity and need to import essential drugs.
Wu is the “part scientist, part engineer, part facilitator” CEO of Seeding Labs, a Boston-based nonprofit that is working to increase access to resources for science in low- and middle-income countries. Thermo Fisher Scientific was the organization’s very first equipment manufacturing partner.
Fekadu heads the World Bank Center for Innovative Drug Development and Therapeutic Trials for Africa (CDT-Africa) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, one of the many institutions that partner with Seeding Labs. Affectionately known by his nickname “Dr. Abe,” he is an international expert in mental health, advising for WHO, The Lancet, and others.
When Wu and Fekadu sit in conversation, a single number serves as accidental refrain about inequity in the global science community – and untapped potential.
But neither of them cares so much about numbers as they do about people. Community.
That’s what the Seeding Labs story, and Thermo Fisher’s partnership, is all about.
“You can’t just drop equipment somewhere,” said Wu. “It really takes a whole community effort, a whole institutional effort for people like Dr. Abe to be able to bring forth their individual goals.”
“Even though we’re supporting institutions, we work with individuals. We work with people who have really big visions for how they want to change the whole scientific infrastructure in their countries,” she said. “And the support that they get from our programs, it’s not just the support of resources – it’s really also that feeling like we are part of a global community.”
Being an Instrument of Change
Thermo Fisher’s partnership with Seeding Labs got its start in 2011 with the debut of the NanoDropTM Spectrophotometer trade-in program, which offered customers the opportunity to trade up their still-working instruments for careful refurbishing and donation to labs in developing countries.
It’s a win-win-win concept – Thermo Fisher customers receive an instrument upgrade, and a high-quality instrument is diverted from the landfill (or a dust-collecting shelf) and into the lab of a peer across the globe.
“Thermo Fisher’s mission statement is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer,” said Dale Patterson, Vice President and General Manager, Molecular Biology at Thermo Fisher. “We are passionate about enabling the best and brightest minds no matter where in the world they are, and what resources they have. Giving instruments a second life and enabling the expansion of science is directly in line with that mission.”
The initiative was so successful that in 2019, Thermo Fisher’s molecular biology team expanded the trade-in program to include thermal cyclers.
» Explore stories of scientists helped by your instrument trade-ins
If you do like your stories in numbers, the trade-up program is particularly impressive: more than 100 thermal cycler instruments have been delivered to 51 universities in 26 countries in just 5 years. The research impact translates to hundreds, likely thousands, of scientists supported by their peers with refurbished instruments.
Scientists like Dr. Enoch Achigan-Dako at the Université d’Abomey-Calavi in Benin, who is combatting food insecurity by developing high-yield crop varieties for farmers in the region. Before his lab had access to a thermal cycler, Achigan-Dako had to send his seeds abroad for analysis.
Or Dr. Geovanny Nic-Can at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mexico, who is using his thermal cycler to explore the epigenetic regulators involved in obesity with an eye towards developing therapeutic solutions. Without the right tools, Nic-Can’s team members had been forced to travel between three laboratories – each about a 30-40 minute drive apart – to complete their experiments.
“Thanks to the support of Seeding Labs and Thermo Fisher, we were able to publish significant results in the Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology,” said Nic-Can. “This equipment is essential to carrying out gene expression analysis for all our experiments and currently supports more than 12 students in their research projects.”
Giving Equipment a Second Life
Along with equity, sustainability is a core value driving Thermo Fisher’s trade-in partnership with Seeding Labs. Every instrument delivered to a lab that needs it is also an instrument diverted from the global waste stream. A useful resource finding its second life.
Thermo Fisher as a whole has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, which involves energy savings in operations, supply chain, product use, innovative sustainable design, and product end-of-life.
Sustainability and social equity are, of course, deeply intertwined as low-income countries are both the least likely to contribute to global carbon emissions and the most likely to be disproportionately affected by the threats of climate change.
Many institutions that partner with Seeding Labs are also acutely aware of this fact and the urgent need to adapt. Awardees are making strides in everything from agriculture and food security to energy and the environment to global health.
For example, Dr. Paulus Kapolo at the University of Namibia needed a thermal cycler for his lab’s work in large-scale soil remediation. His lab is now teaming up with mechanics, garage owners, and other neighbors in his rural community to use the natural decontaminating abilities of microorganisms to remove engine oil from the soil.
Increasing access to resources for scientists like Kapolo is vital because so many times, local problems benefit from local solutions. Climate change is far from a local problem, but its impact on every community is unique.
“Without biotechnology and innovation, a country is not going to grow,” said Fekadu. “I was interested in the equipment, but the connection itself also gave me hope. We were part of a global movement to change the face of the world … and find solutions for global problems such as cancer.”
“There’s a huge amount of endogenous knowledge just in Ethiopia that’s untouched. And potentially, we could come across something really big if we work together.”
Be an instrument of change at thermofisher.com/instrumentofchange»
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References
“Climate Change and the Developing World: A Disproportionate Impact.” US Global Leadership Coalition, March 2, 2021. https://www.usglc.org/blog/climate-change-and-the-developing-world-a-disproportionate-impact/.
“How Much Does Your Country Invest in R&D?” UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://uis.unesco.org/apps/visualisations/research-and-development-spending/.
“Low Income Countries.” World Economics. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://www.worldeconomics.com/Regions/Low-Income-Countries/.
“Middle Income Countries.” World Economics. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://www.worldeconomics.com/Regions/Middle-Income-Countries/.
Phaege, Tefo. “Dying from Lack of Medicines | Africa Renewal.” Africa Renewal. United Nations, December 2016. https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2016-march-2017/dying-lack-medicines.
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