In Michael Crichton’s 1968 book “The Andromeda Strain,” scientists working in the highest biosafety levels took days using the most sophisticated equipment available to identify an alien pathogen.
In the 45 years since, the equipment and protocols have improved, but it still can take weeks or months to isolate some toxins. Now, a faster survey method has emerged.
Scientists at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute have developed a way of detecting bioterror threats in about an hour. The new process is not only faster but cheaper, and may thus accelerate bioterror countermeasures.
In under an hour, the process screens for pairs of affinity reagents that bind with target bacteria, toxins or viruses. Normally, this type of screening requires costly equipment to purify and analyze reagents that can number in the hundreds and takes weeks to months to complete.
The new method is called rapid antibody pairing, or RAP, technology.
“I figured out a very simple and reliable way to bypass the need for purifying these proteins and scaling everything down such that a target capture assay can be developed in hours rather than weeks,” said virologist Andrew Hayhurst.
Hayhurst’s streamlined process performs at any biosafety level with minimal equipment. “We proved the system works at enhanced biosafety level 2 using botulinum neurotoxins, the world’s most poisonous poisons, and at biosafety level 4 using Ebolavirus Zaire, a hemorrhagic fever virus with 95 percent fatality rate.”
Hayhurst told Homeland1 his methods are so straightforward that most laboratories are probably already familiar with the nuts and bolts of his new process, so it would be easy to adapt existing processes to take advantage of the new system’s benefits.
While the technology can be applied to sophisticated set-ups focused on automation and high throughput, Hayhurst also sees a niche in easing the burden of smaller resource-constrained bench scientists in quickly being able to generate an assay to their favorite target of interest.
“This is important if extramural research is to survive in these economic hard times and retain the rich diversity of approaches required to devise ingenious countermeasures to high-consequence pathogens and toxins,” Hayhurst said.
Hayhurst said he hasn’t found any downsides to the system, because a lot of thought went into making it as robust and reliable as possible.
“One of our goals is to adapt it to multiplex diagnostic arrays as a supplement to the ELISA methods that focus on detecting one bug in one well so that we can target hundreds of different bugs in one well,” he said. ELISA, or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, is a test that uses antibodies and color change to identify a substance.
Hayhurst said RAP technology can be applied to any target of interest, not necessarily biothreats.
“With the race to take snapshots of human proteomes to decipher patterns of disease, the method may also find a use here,” he said.