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Re: [stem-ebola] Ebola Rapid Antigen Tests re: Ira
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Thanks Alex for sharing your ideas.
I do not understand all of them, since I am not trained as a micro-biologist, just a mere physicist/applied math gent.
Given that, I did have some experience with the use of antibody detection of very small molecules using antibody coated sensors. The problem is one of particle concentration that is very low, and how to get it sensed by interacting and binding with the antibody.
My idea at the time was coating a very thin tube with antibodies (which people can do) and then run the sample. However, the antibodies would not interact with the particles sufficiently due to poor mixing. So we decided to use pulsed pressure to induce mixing (turbulence) near the boundaries. Theoretically it worked, and experiments were going to be done, but then the fellow doing the experiments left for one of the intelligence agencies. So as far as I know, it is still up in the air.
I guess in the pre-symptomatic stage, the issues of getting any signature of the virus to the sensor is still a problem. In HIV and HepC, people are infected but still sub-threshold for detection (I have attached a paper which uses some techniques from population epidemic modeling applied to spontaneous viral clearance, and one of ours that discusses the original theory for epidemics.)
There is some work at the lab (NRL) in the Center for BioMolecular Science and Engineering that has been going on for real time detection of pathogens, but I have not heard much about it recently. I will find out what status, if any, is going on, maybe by next week.
All the best
Ira
Attachment:
chaudhury_journal.pone.0038549_2012.pdf
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Schwartz et al. - 2011 - Converging towards the optimal path to extinction Converging towards the optimal path to extinction.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document