Innovative Techniques and Diagnostic Tests for Pandemic Preparedness and Health Equity

 
Director: Chris Le Co-Director: Camille Hamula
CBRF: $9.5M  BRIF: $2.5M

 

This program is aimed at advancing point-of-care and high-throughput diagnostic assays that are modular, adaptable, and rapidly deployable, building on the team's successes with SARS-CoV-2 assays. It is led by Dr. Chris Le at the 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø and Dr. Camille Hamula at the University of Saskatchewan. Team members from the 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø, Calgary, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are designing assays flexible enough to detect zoonotic respiratory viruses and adaptable to diverse specimen types. This program also integrates a patient-oriented approach to address diagnostic inequities in underserved populations across Canada.

Their CBRF program will:

  • Identify new molecular targets of emerging pathogens.
  • Establish rapid diagnostic tools using advanced technologies such as CRISPR, DNAzymes, and aptamers.
  • Explore new diagnostic test geometries and designs that enable parallel detection of different viral targets from a single sample.
  • Methods for evaluating patient immunity to pathogens, such as immunoaffinity mass spectrometry and de novo sequencing of patient antibodies.

 

Their BRIF Infrastructure funding will provide instrumentation for:

  • Identification and quantification of nucleic acids.
  • Deep proteome identification of pathogen and host proteins in clinical samples.
  • Development and validation of point-of-care diagnostic tests.

Team Members

Chris Le, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

D. Lorne Tyrrell, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Xiaoli Pang, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Xing Fang Li, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Hongquan Zhang, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Carmen Charlton, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Ian Lewis, University of Calgary

William Ghali, University of Calgary

B. Mario Pinto, University of Manitoba

Ninad Mehta, University of Saskatchewan

Todd McMullen, Access Point of Care Diagnostics

 

 

Camille Hamula, University of Saskatchewan

Michael Serpe, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Michael Mengel, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Andrei Drabovich, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Gregory Tyrrell, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Graham Tipples, 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø

Amir Sanati Nezhad, University of Calgary

Jason Kindrachuk, University of Manitoba

Baljit Singh, University of Saskatchewan

Vanessa Tran, Public Health Ontario

Troy Feener, Alberta Centre for Advanced Diagnostics