MUKILTEO – Sometimes, in the name of science, someone has to sneeze into a test tube.
That’s what one CombiMatrix Group scientist did in the middle of a flu bout last year. The purpose? To see whether researchers could identify what kind of flu he had.
If he had bird flu instead of a more common strain, it would be worth knowing right away because some strains have proved fatal at times.
Which is why Mukilteo-based CombiMatrix, owned by Acacia Research Corp., began working last year to perfect a biochip that can quickly identify bird flu and dozens of other strains.
Michael O’Leary / The Herald
David Danley, director of CombiMatrix’s homeland security and defense programs, said the immediate risk of a global bird flu outbreak appears small. That doesn’t lessen the need for tools to help prevent a pandemic, however.
“Flu pandemics can happen, and we have all these other strains that can cause it,” Danley said.
The arrival of bird flu in Asia and scattered reports of cases elsewhere in the world have sent many biotechnology companies scurrying to develop ways to quickly identify the virus, as well as make early attempts at finding a vaccine.
CombiMatrix, which began working on bird flu well before the media and politicians focused on it earlier this fall, believes its approach gives it an advantage.
“A lot of companies have a chip that can tell you this is bird flu or this is not bird flu,” Danley said. “But diagnosis by elimination is a very weak way to do it.”
The CombiMatrix biochip, on the other hand, is designed to tell researchers what flu strain a patient has, even if it’s not bird flu. From a swab sample taken from a patient’s nose, a scientist extracts the virus’s genetic code, which can then be analyzed by the chip.
“It not only will allow a doctor to identify a strain of influenza, but also to watch if it’s drifting toward strains that might be more infectious to humans,” Danley said.
“They cover all the options with their particular chip,” said Richard Webby, an infectious diseases scientist at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Center in Memphis, Tenn. St. Jude’s has worked with CombiMatrix on the chip’s development during the past year.
Which is why the U.N.’s World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and officials from other federal and state health agencies have talked to the company about its flu chips.
The U.S. Air Force and a vaccine maker also are collaborating with CombiMatrix on fighting the flu.
The company has worked extensively with the military on technology to detect chemical and biological warfare threats. In a different way, the flu and other upper respiratory illnesses also can pose a threat to the nation’s soldiers.
In the close living and working quarters on bases and at boot camps, viruses can spread quickly.
“For instance, in basic training, there’s a virus called adnovirus, which can be lethal, fatal. There’s also SARS, which could be a problem overseas, as well as Legionnaires’ disease,” Danley said. “They want us to be able to distinguish these serious diseases one from another.”
So the Air Force’s Institute of Occupational Health in Texas will test the virus identification abilities of up to 800 CombiMatrix chips to see how well they distinguish between a garden-variety cold and something more serious. The testing is part of a $338,000 contract the Air Force awarded to the firm.
NovaVax, a Pennsylvania-based vaccine maker, also is working with CombiMatrix to explore new techniques to develop vaccines against the flu. The traditional development process is time-consuming, making it difficult to respond to rapidly evolving threats such as bird flu.
This year’s bird flu isn’t the first headline-grabbing virus for which CombiMatrix has developed biochips. In 2003, it did the same thing with SARS. Company spokesman Brett Undem said doing so emphasizes the speed at which CombiMatrix’s analysis chips can be programmed to test for different organisms.
In the coming months, CombiMatrix also plans to introduce a biochip with more capacity, as well as new low-cost chip readers and programming devices for use by researchers.
“We’ll really be offering the whole solution, which will allow us to attract customers in a whole new way,” Undem said.
At St. Jude’s, which is working on a bird flu vaccine, Webby said flu-related research tools such as those made by CombiMatrix could be useful in the race to head off a worldwide crisis.
“It’s really irrelevant whether (bird flu) becomes the next pandemic or not. There will be a next one,” he said.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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