Researchers Race to Develop Field Tests to Confirm Ebola
Original article from: Bloomberg posted on August 15, 2014. By Marie French
It took three days recently for a New York City hospital to determine that a patient with Ebola-like symptoms didn’t have the deadly virus.
Now, as the disease rages in West Africa, researchers are closing in on the development of new devices that will allow medical workers to get results in hours or minutes, taking the determination out of the laboratory and into the field.
The laptop-sized devices include tiny silicon microchips imprinted with antibodies that bind with the Ebola virus, making it immediately identifiable. With current technology, blood from suspected Ebola victims must undergo complex genetic testing at a laboratory to confirm the diagnosis.
“We now have the basic architecture” to build the devices to test, said John Connor, a Boston University microbiologist working with one of several federal grants aimed at improving Ebola testing. “We’re working as fast as we can to make it a reality.”