Science fiction — or real life?
Company wants to use lasers to detect COVID-19
If you take a test for the new coronavirus, you often wait a day for the results, longer if a lab is backed up with a lot of tests.
Lab workers must mix the samples with special chemicals, then load them into large, expensive machines. That means samples can take many hours to process.
A machine roughly the size of a microwave could change that.
A University of Arizona start-up called Botanisol Analytics is currently working on a machine called a surface enhanced Román spectrometer, which shoots a laser light at a sample to detect its molecular makeup. This is similar to the technology that was used on the Mars Rover to analyze rocks on Mars.
On Earth, the spectrometer could be used to detect the new coronavirus in patients at a faster and cheaper rate than what is currently available and with a high degree of accuracy.
Botanisol Analytics CEO Dave Talenfeld said the machine could deliver positive results in under two minutes and negative results in under 10 minutes, with an accuracy rate of about 95 percent. Best of all, he said, the machine is easy to operate and will work anywhere with a normal power outlet.
“We can put rapid testing machines that can test an unlimited number of people anywhere they are needed,” Talenfeld said.
‘Like science fiction come to life’
To get results, lab workers place samples onto a special slide and insert it into the machine; the machine does the rest.
“It is fully automated,” Talenfeld said. “There is very little room for human error.”
The technology behind the machine is a bit more complex.
“For Star Trek fans out there, this is like a real life tricorder,” Talenfeld said, referring to a fictional multi-function device on the popular TV show and movie series that could scan and analyze anything.
While Botanisol Analytics is currently developing the machine to detect the new coronavirus, it could be reprogrammed in the future to detect any other virus.
“It’s like science fiction come to life,” Talenfeld said.
When molecules in a sample are hit with the light from the machine’s laser, they vibrate. Every molecule in the world has its own unique vibration in response to this light. These vibrations then cause the wavelengths of the light to lengthen or shorten, depending on the energy of the vibration.
As a result, every type of molecule emits its own unique shifted light in response, essentially creating a light signature for that molecule.
The shifted light given off by vibrating molecules is detected by a sensor in the machine, and analyzed by a computer algorithm that measures the amount of shift in the light to determine what molecules are in the sample.
Though it sounds complicated, Talenfeld said molecule detection tests using lasers is simpler than traditional virus detection tests.
“When you use a traditional test, there’s a lot of wet chemistry involved. So you have to design, develop, manufacture and ship new chemical reagents to detect the new threat,” he said.
By contrast, he said, his company’s spectrometer machine would be more of a universal diagnostic tool.
“The laser captures the light spectrum without any chemicals. So you don’t have to change the machine to to be able to detect a new threat,” he said. “You just have to reprogram it.”
Company hopes to deploy machines by 2021
Since the company’s inception in 2017, it has worked on multiple prototypes. Currently it has two functional prototypes being developed for the military, using about $2.5 million in funding from the Air Force, which hopes to use the technology for disease surveillance and to detect new disease threats.
One of the prototypes is scheduled for validation for the National Guard to use to detect COVID-19. Talenfeld said he hopes to be able to supply the Guard with machines in late 2020 or in early 2021.
The company also has an additional $2.7 million in discretionary funding from investors, which it hopes to use to create commercially available machines for customers with the proper medical credentials and FDA compliance.
Talenfeld said the company hopes to make as many as 100,000 machines in 2021.
In the interest of getting the machine to the public as quickly as possible, the company won’t sell the machines as a medical diagnostic tool, which would require a lengthy FDA approval process, but rather as a screening tool, which only requires a 510(k) approval from the FDA, typically a shorter approval process.
“That will enable people to rapidly screen large populations and then send only those high risk individuals for more thorough diagnosis,” Talenfeld said. “So it just saves a lot of medical personnel time.”
A negative result takes longer, because for the machine to conclusively
say that there is no novel coronavirus in a sample, it must scan the entire sample. If there is any novel coronavirus in a sample, the machine is likely to spot it sooner, in under two minutes.
Machines could get ‘thousands of times better’
Though getting results at this speed is sort of like introducing a car at a horse race, the company’s second prototype under development would give results at something more akin to rocket ship speed. The company’s other working prototype uses a special system invented by University of Arizona optical sciences professor Tom Milster, along with co-inventors Pramod Khulbe and Barry Gelernt.
The patented system relies on using the smallest wavelengths of light possible to shoot at the sample, which Talenfeld said gives the second prototype the potential to be “thousands of times better” than the first prototype.
Milster said the first prototype uses visible wavelength, which is roughly 150200 times smaller than the thickness of paper. The second prototype uses a nonvisible wavelength that is roughly 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of paper, making it about 4,000 times more sensitive than the first one.
With a smaller wavelength, Talenfeld explained, the machine is being designed to give results nearly instantaneously and with a higher degree of accuracy.
A smaller wavelength results in higher accuracy, just as the popular pin art toy works better when there are smaller and more numerous pins with which to create 3D art.
“If you have a million tiny pins, you put it on a face and you can tell who that person is —It looks just like them,” Talenfeld explained. “Whereas if you only had a dozen really, really fat pins, you wouldn’t even know it was a human face. You would just see that there’s something roundish happening there.”
The wavelength used by Milster’s system is the smallest one possible that will transmit through the air at normal temperatures and pressures, without needing to be put in a vacuum.
“It’s actually the most prevalent wavelength in the universe. It comes from hydrogen,” Milster said. “But it doesn’t transmit through the atmosphere, so we don’t see a lot of it at ground level.”
Because of this, Milster and his team have to recreate this wavelength of light by shooting an electric signal like a lightning bolt through hydrogen gas.
Milster first received grant funding from the National Science Foundation about five years ago to work on recreating this wavelength for use in microscopes. He said he didn’t initially realize the full scope of the wavelength’s potential. “During the course of that work, we realized that this wavelength would also work very well for the kind of detection that people are interested in now for detecting viruses and things,” Milster said.
With his microscope project for the National Science Foundation completed, Milster has turned his full attention toward the spectrometer machine.
“The biggest challenge that we face is actually the light source,” he explained. “Our light source is a research unit that we bought from Germany and it was pretty expensive.”
His team is currently working with a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute chemistry professor, Jacob Shelley, to develop a smaller, more efficient and cheaper light source to recreate the small wavelength.
Because of this challenge, he estimates that it could be a few more years before the second prototype would become commercially available.
Botanisol Analytics is now in talks with funders to build a dedicated machine manufacturing facility in Phoenix to create the machines, which Talenfeld said will not only help combat the pandemic, but also help add more jobs to Arizona. “It’s a terrible human catastrophe, but it’s good to know those of us from Phoenix, Arizona, have an outsized contribution to make,” he said. “We have an opportunity to contain and mitigate this crisis. And then also help prevent future crises.”
Eventually, Botanisol Analytics may consider getting its machines FDA approved for commercial use as a diagnostic tool. Talenfeld said he can envision them being installed at airports, government buildings or schools, enabling countries to spring into action the minute the next global disease threat emerges. “While while we have an opportunity to help restore economic activity and restore normalcy this time, we hope to be in a position to help prevent the next outbreak entirely,” he said.
Amanda Morris covers all things bioscience, which includes health care, technology, new research and the environment. Send her tips, story ideas, or dog memes at amorris@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter @amandamomorris for the latest bioscience updates.