By Diagnostics World Staff
June 20, 2018 | GeneCapture, a diagnostics company based at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Ala., announced a two-year, $1 million Small Business Technology Transfer Research contract from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
Under the terms of the DTRA contract, GeneCapture plans to deliver, “a desktop prototype to rapidly identify critical pathogens considered threatening to warfighters. But GeneCapture’s vision, CEO Peggy Sammon explained to Diagnostics World, is to develop a portable diagnostic unit that can test for 200 pathogens in less than an hour for about $20.
GeneCapture’s testing technology relies on a microarray comprised of custom-designed DNA probes for specific RNA segments of various pathogens. “We’ve designed several probes per pathogen,” Sammon explained, “so we’ll get what we’re calling a pathogen fingerprint.”
Sammon describes the method as, “simple and rugged”, which makes sample prep easier, she said. The planned product will be mobile, portable, and require no cold chain, she said. Eventually, she explained, all test reagents will be within disposable test cartridges about the same if a smart phone. The technique analyzes human or animal samples—blood, urine, saliva or swab—and detects bacteria, viruses or fungi, including a mix on the same cartridge.
For the DOD contract, cartridges will be designed to test for a set of pathogens selected by DTRA that present potential biological threats to the warfighter, but the company says the portable platform could also enable civilian applications such as rapid infection diagnosis in schools, urgent care clinics, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, veterinary clinics, cruise ships, and airports.
GeneCapture is collaborating on the DOD contract with Birmingham-based Southern Research, a nonprofit, scientific research organization. Paula Koelle, chief scientist at GeneCapture, and principal investigator for the contract will lead the effort to produce the disposable cartridges and desktop analyzer. Southern Research will provide its expertise in infectious diseases, purifying genetic material for testing, and designing clinical trials for the FDA.
GeneCapture’s approach was born at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) where Krishnan Chittur is a chemical engineering professor emeritus. Chittur has been working on rapid infection diagnosis since he endured a suspenseful three-day wait to see if his premature baby had pneumonia.
“It turns out she did not have an infection, but we didn’t learn that until after three days of strong antibiotics had coursed through her tiny body. A few years later, in my lab at UAH, we worked out a fast way to see if an infection was present right away. We knew it was a game-changer,” Chittur said in a press release.
The original discovery was patented at UAH and exclusively licensed to GeneCapture. Chittur is co-founder of GeneCapture.