Brisbane company Ellume wins $US30m to deliver rapid COVID-19 tests

The US is spending $42m on Brisbane company Ellume’s rapid covid tests. But the Queensland government isn’t listening.

Ellume chief executive and founder Sean Parsons in the company’s lab in East Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

A Brisbane medical technology company says it has found the key to returning the world back to some kind of normality and has received $US30m ($42.1m) from the US government to roll it off production lines.

Ellume has developed three COVID-19 tests that can be completed in less than 15 minutes and be deployed at airports, stadiums and offices, in an effort to end mass lockdowns and contain the virus. Chief executive and founder Sean Parsons said the tests should be available for use in the US within weeks.

But Australians will have to wait much longer. “We have been having discussions with the Queensland state government, which have largely fallen on deaf ears,” Dr Parsons said. “The Australian government also knows we are here and what we are doing, but again there hasn’t been anywhere near the same kind of engagement as the US.

“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrating. That said, Australia’s need for testing is a bit different from America’s. America has a much higher caseload of COVID cases, and lockdown of America to bring the caseload down to ­almost zero like we have done in Australia is not a viable option.

“Nevertheless, we have unique technology that has been hard fought over a decade and it is a little bit disappointing the Australian government hasn’t been interested and understood the value that could bring to COVID.”

Ellume received the US funding to accelerate the clinical testing and manufacturing scale-up of its COVID-19 antigen tests. It has developed three tests: at-home; point-of-care for medical professionals; and another for high-throughput settings, which can complete eight tests at once and is ideal for use at airports, stadiums, offices and other places with crowds.

The at-home test uses an analyser connected to a smartphone via Bluetooth which digitally analyses a self-collected sample from the user’s nasal passage. Results are transmitted through a secure cloud connection, generating a digital certificate of the results.

Dr Parsons — a critical care doctor who specialised in emergency and intensive care medicine — said the tests would complement the use of a COVID-19 vaccine, which is not expected until at least early next year under the most optimistic forecasts. Others say a vaccine could take much longer given there is no immunisation for the similar SARS virus, 18 years after that outbreak.

“We are vaccine supporters, and we think vaccines will be a good thing. We don’t see testing as a replacement for vaccines,” he said. “The challenge with vaccines I don’t think will be safety — we are going to prove safety pretty well because large enough numbers of people are being tested. The big challenge is efficacy.

“We don’t know how effective these vaccines are going to be at preventing a COVID infection and we don’t know how long they are going to be effective.

“So as the years roll by, we are still going to have a problem of uncertainty of COVID risk … there still will be a need to test.”

Ellume’s new manufacturing facility in Richlands, Brisbane, will be producing tests in coming weeks, and Dr Parsons said he expected all three products to be available in the US in time for Thanksgiving in late November.