MEDICAL DIAGNOSTICS
Even before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, officials at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City - which start in February - had made preparations for dealing with terrorism. Beyond taking the usual security precautions, medical tents at the Games will stock special equipment that can analyze, in a matter of 20 minutes, air, snow, blood, and saliva samples to determine whether there's a biochemical threat or just an isolated case of the flu.
RAPID, a new detection device and Web-based surveillance system developed by Idaho Technology and the US Air Force, will help officials identify, treat, and contain ailments. Medical personnel and others with clearance will carry the ruggedized advanced pathogen identification device - a 50-pound mobile lab that fits into a backpack and can test for 35 pathogens. Flourescent dyes in RAPID's reagent mixture attach to DNA and make it glow, allowing for fast and quantitative analysis - you can see the affected areas of a body.
The system was used undercover this year at the Super Bowl and at President Bush's inauguration. Todd Ritter, director of business development and product deployment at Idaho Tech, won't reveal whether any samples were taken at those events, but he says the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Energy, the US armed forces, and foreign militaries in 14 countries have bought the devices.
RAPID is based on polymerase chain reaction technology. In PCR, a staple of laboratory testing, the DNA of a single cell is treated with polymerase enzymes, inducing it to replicate millions of times over several hours. This makes identifying the pathogen easier. University of Utah scientists Carl Wittwer and Kirk Ririe thought that if PCR were faster, it could be used to detect agricultural pathogens in the field and possibly head off livestock and food-borne epidemics. The two started Idaho Tech and secured funding from the National Institutes of Health to build a device for real-time PCR testing.
The Air Force heard of the technology about the same time it was building LEADERS, the lightweight epidemiology advanced detection and emergency response system. The Web-based app - used by hospitals in September's recovery efforts - lets medical staffs quickly exchange information about suspected biowarfare and disease outbreaks. The Air Force gave Idaho Technology a small grant to make a field-hardened version of its PCR test, and RAPID was born.
The device can survive extreme temperatures, vibrations, and 1-meter drops. It's also air- and watertight. Easy-to-read results are downloaded onto a laptop that comes with the package. The Air Force has deployed 12 RAPID devices, with the goal of putting one in every clinical lab for day-to-day testing, says Lt. Col. Debra Niemeyer, chief of the Air Force's Force Protection Division. By 2005, the military hopes to have 35 RAPID teams that can fan out around bases, test for the presence of biochemicals and infectious diseases, and pass the info on to LEADERS.
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