Congratulations to Krista and Ryan for their latest publication in Cell Reports Methods. This work was an exciting intergenerational Bailey Lab project, as Krista worked with 2012 alum, Dr. Abraham Qavi, along with his current research advisor, Dr. Gaya Amarasinghe, and collaborators at Integrated Biotherapeutics, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Inc., the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and Washington University. We enjoyed hosting Abe (pictured to the right) for a week while they worked on analyzing the NHP samples for the study!

Rapid detection of an Ebola biomarker with optical microring resonators

Summary:
Ebola virus (EBOV) is a highly infectious pathogen, with a case mortality rate as high as 89%. Rapid therapeutic treatments and supportive measures can drastically improve patient outcome; however, the symptoms of EBOV disease (EVD) lack specificity from other endemic diseases. Given the high mortality and significant symptom overlap, there is a critical need for sensitive, rapid diagnostics for EVD. Facile diagnosis of EVD remains a challenge. Here, we describe a rapid and sensitive diagnostic for EVD through microring resonator sensors in conjunction with a unique biomarker of EBOV infection, soluble glycoprotein (sGP). Microring resonator sensors detected sGP in under 40 min with a limit of detection (LOD) as low as 1.00 ng/mL in serum. Furthermore, we validated our assay with the detection of sGP in serum from EBOV-infected non-human primates. Our results demonstrate the utility of a high-sensitivity diagnostic platform for detection of sGP for diagnosis of EVD.

Find the full article here!

Read WashU’s press release about the article here!