Flu Fighter

Reported January 2007

BOULDER, Colo. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Each year Americans rush to get their flu shots before they get sick. But what if the "bug bites" before the vaccine works?

A genetic revelation in science could save you from getting sick. Biochemists can now diagnose, treat, and develop vaccines against new strains of flu faster than ever before -- bioscience that could benefit people around the world.

"Last year ... of the human influenza viruses that were infecting people in U.S., 90 percent of them became resistant to an entire class of antiviral drugs that were very popular," Erica Dawson, Ph.D., of University of Colorado, Boulder, tells Ivanhoe.

There, biochemists have developed a diagnostic tool that can identify a strain of influenza in hours, instead of the usual days or weeks. A robot carefully drops microscopic dots of human DNA on slides. The slide is then washed with a sample of the infected patient's nasal or throat culture.

Dr. Dawson says, "Where the influenza matches the sequence of DNA that is on the slide, we will get (clap) a sticking event" ... Fitting like a lock and key. "The third step in this process is the detection step, and that is when we take a solution," she says.

The pink florescent solution makes the DNA/virus match visible, and a computer identifies human or bird flu strains faster than ever before. Start to finish ... Seven hours.

Dr. Dawson says, "If something like the Flu Chip were to get in hands of epidemiologists and public health laboratories around the world, we could keep a better handle on what flu was, when and where."

And she says that tiny speck of information on a slide could help prevent flu pandemics worldwide.

The University of Colorado hopes to decrease the time it takes to perform the Flu Chip test by more than half. The goal is to make it possible for doctors to test, diagnose and prescribe for flu, in a one-hour office visit.

The American Society for Microbiology contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Ron Larson, Ph.D.
Department of Chemical Engineering
2300 Hayward
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2136
(734) 936-0772
rlarson@umich.edu
http://www.engin.umich.edu/dept/cheme/people/larson.html

American Society for Microbiology
Washington, DC 20036-2904
(202) 737-3600
http://www.asm.org

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