Further update re Paraytec Limited

26 March 2021

Braveheart Investment Group plc

("Braveheart" or the "Group")

Further update re Paraytec Limited

Further to the announcement on 1 March 2021, Braveheart Investment Group plc (AIM: BRH), is pleased to provide an update concerning progress to develop a COVID-19 test that Paraytec Limited ("Paraytec" or the "Company") is working on in conjunction with the University of Sheffield.

The Paraytec team has used isolated lab-grown COVID-19 virus to optimise the operational sensitivity of its instrument for the detection of pre-symptomatic and early-stage symptomatic virus levels. Using this approach, the team has established a lower limit of detection of 1,000 virions per millilitre of sample fluid analysed, as anticipated.

Paraytec's test requires only 0.1 millilitres of sample fluid to undertake a successful test. This is a substantially smaller volume than is required for the current gold standard qPCR test used to extract material from a nasopharyngeal swab and indicates that the Paraytec test may be capable of detecting as few as 100 virions in a sample.  This would represent a significantly better performance than the lateral flow tests that are currently authorised for emergency use to detect infectivity and which typically have a lower limit of detection of 10,000-100,000 virions per sample.

The Paraytec team consider that this is a very important result because, if confirmed in the prospective clinical validation, it would mean that Paraytec's test would result in a substantial (40%) improvement in overall test sensitivity compared to existing lateral flow tests, due to the reduced chances of receiving a false negative result and thus ensuring that people who obtain a negative test result can be increasingly confident that they have not become infected.   

Prof Carl Smythe, who leads the University of Sheffield team, commented, "The analytical sensitivity achieved in these latest set of tests is very good news indeed. Having the capability to detect a few hundred viral copies per swab means that this test - which does not need to be located in a specialised laboratory or operated by trained laboratory personnel - has the potential to compete very favourably with expensive centralised systems requiring two-day turnaround times."  

Trevor Brown, CEO of Braveheart, commented "These results have exceeded even our ambitious expectations and are a credit to Professor Smythe and his tireless team."

For further information: