Lucigen Corporation, headquartered in Middleton, reports developing a test that can detect Ebola quickly and anywhere - no lab needed.
Director of Business Development Hemanth Shenoi says the company hopes to have the test on the market by spring. Ebola has caused thousands of deaths in west Africa, and a few cases have arisen elsewhere. Quarantines are frequently advised, until it is known whether a person has been infected.
Shenoi says all the tests the FDA has currently approved for Ebola, are designed to be run in specialized clinical labs - labs with high tech equipment and scientists, to work with highly-infectious Ebola.
He says demand is great for a test health care workers could use in the field, to quickly identify who might have Ebola, so that is why Lucigen is accelerating the development of its product.
"We have a method to test for blood - probably from a finger stick, as well we're working on the method to test from an oral swab, essentially putting something like a Q-tip inside your mouth, as a way to collect a sample. Those two samples are introduced into a small device which is a little bit bigger than a pen," Shenoi explains.
He says the material heads into a reaction tube and the reaction is run, with the entire process from sample to result, taking less than an hour.
As for concerns about the safety of health care workers administering the test, Shenoi says Lucigen believes its method inactivates Ebola very early in the process, to minimize the likelihood the worker would be infected. He says the company continues testing its theory.
