#CSIR75

Dr Tsepo Tsekoa, CSIR principal researcher in conversation with Prof Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, Chairman and CEO of NantWorks
Prof Shiong is a South African born surgeon living in the USA. He founded and sold several healthcare companies and developed the blockbuster cancer drug, Abraxane. The CSIR’s Dr Tsepo Tsekoa joins him in a conversation on how the convergence of healthcare, information technology and artificial intelligence is transforming healthcare. Tsekoa will highlight the CSIR’s biopharmaceuticals production capability and breakthroughs, and what role partnerships are playing to maximise impact. He will give an inside view on the monoclonal antibodies portfolio, including work on Rabies Rabivir, CAP256-VRC26 HIV antibodies and biosimilars. He will reveal more on recent global partnerships and localisation efforts to make technologies for example for biosimilars, available in South Africa. He compares notes with Soon-Shiong on the future, but also on the CSIR’s involvement in the Covid-19 pandemic through recombinant diagnostics and therapeutics production, and briefly introduces the CSIR vision for capacitating the local industry to produce clinical grade biologics for regulated trials and market entry.