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The Harvard University Innovations Incubator has expressed interest in the concepts developed by a team of students from Makerere University. Their creation is a biosensor capable of identifying cancer-causing agents present in water and the environment.

The team that worked on the Biosensor project for detection of Toxic Cancer-Causing substances in the environment at the Department of Biochemistry at the College of Natural Sciences at Makerere University

Harvard University Innovations Incubator has shown interest in ideas by a group of students from Makerere University who developed a biosensor which can detect cancer causing substances in water and the environment.

They picked interest in the project because it presented a promising start-up to develop biosensors that will solve cancer problems around the world using the biosensor. The students are being prepared to pitch the idea to the Chief Executive Officers of established biotechnology companies in the US.

The Harvard University Incubator selected the student’s innovative project in December 2023 as the only African Project to participate in the four months online Global Nucleate Activation Program beginning on May 21, 2024

Dr Julius Mulindwa (L) the Principal Investigator of the Biosensor for detection of Toxic Cancer-Causing substances in the environment poses for a photo with some of the students researching on the project at the Department of Biochemistry at the College of Natural Sciences at Makerere University.

Dr Julius Mulindwa, a Principal Investigator at the Department of Biochemistry at the College of Natural Sciences said;

“Some of these initiatives are driven by international competition. Now you can see after winning the medal, it has created the need to start investing in them. Before Covid 19, government wasn’t investing in science but now they are. These students got exposure from Cambridge and Harvard and they created the network.

Two of the team members that worked on the Biosensor for detection of Toxic Cancer-Causing substances in the environment at Makerere University on February 20, 2024

Dr Mulindwa asked Makerere University administration and government to support students with unique ideas to travel and participate in International Conferences that give them exposure.

Mr. Micheal Okea, a fourth year Medicine and Surgery student and the project team lead at Makerere University said their team of seven applied to participate in the 2023 International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition in Paris France where the only other African countries participating were Ghana and Egypt.

Mr. Okea’s team presented a biosensor for detection of toxic cancer-causing substances in the environment at the competition which won the silver medal.