KEY POINTS:
Kayak design and counting viruses would seem to have absolutely nothing in common.
But a Dunedin company has applied technology it developed for a foldable kayak to the biochemistry world of nano technology and the measurement, analysis and control of single microscopic particles.
The key to the technology is a flexible polyurethane compound that Dr Murray Broom, chief science officer of Dunedin-based Astral, first used to cover a collapsible kayak he designed.
Broom is now using a hole in the flexible compound to detect, characterise and control the passage of particles, providing scientists which much more information more quickly than ever before.
The technology is called scanning ion occlusion spectroscopy (SIOS) and Astral has created the science, hardware and software to fabricate and control "dynamically resizeable nanopores".
Australo executive chairman Hans Van Der Voorn said one of its first commercial applications was counting viruses.
Present virus counting technology used light and, in some cases, could take a week to count and provide only an approximate number.
Van Der Voorn said by controlling the size of hole through which particles pass, SIOS technology gave an exact number of particles in a process that took 30 minutes.
Van Der Voorn, who founded Nova Gas, said that to be competitive New Zealand companies had to produce technology that was transportable, quick, accurate and cheap. Australo was doing that, with the latest prototype about the size of a coffee grinder. But the 2009 version was expected to be the size of a cellphone, for a tenth of the cost.
Comparable existing machines were the size of washing machines.
The ability to count viruses alone had a multitude of uses, from universities and medical research to general medical practitioners and by being portable, it could be taken into the field.
The disease, chlamydia, was difficult to diagnose but easy to treat, and Van Der Voorn said SIOS technology allowed a doctor to take a sample, process it in an Australo virus counter and in five minutes have an answer.
Initial development was done privately between Dr Broom and University of Otago biochemist Stephen Sowerby, but Australo, which was formed in 2005, was now working closely with university scientists and has a suite in the Centre for Innovation.
Van Der Voorn said a virus counter would be released in the coming months and staff were travelling to Germany and the United Kingdom in the next few weeks to promote it.
A nano-particle measurement tool would be available later this year and a sensitive molecular diagnostic platform was under development.
Australo was also working closely with Oxford University and partners in the United States, Australia, Japan and in New Zealand in refining and developing the technology.
Research, Science and Technology Minister Pete Hodgson visited Australo last week to promote the Government's research and development tax credit.
Mr Hodgson said the tax credit was available from Tuesday, and investing in research and development could earn companies a 15 per cent tax credit which he said could be worth $630 million to businesses over the next four years.
Mr Van Der Voorn welcomed the tax credit, saying that while he has been able to access grants to help fund his development, it took time to receive the money.
Cash-starved start-up companies were anxious to commercialise technology to generate income but often had to redirect staff and resources to form filling to get grants.
