Within a matter of weeks, Israel will have the technology to boost daily coronavirus testing to hundreds of thousands of people, according to a Hebrew University innovator who is developing new lab protocols.
Dr. Naomi Habib said that her team is developing a method that will enable batches of 40,000 test samples to be examined simultaneously using a sequencing machine. “This can open up the possibility of mass testing all over the world,” she said.
“I strongly believe that Hebrew University will soon have the technology to do sequencing-based testing that will enable us to test hundreds of thousands of people a day,” Habib told The Times of Israel.
Habib voiced confidence that other teams around the world will make similar breakthroughs, saying that with her method in the pipeline along with others, people can be optimistic that large-scale testing will help get the world back to routine. She expects it to be used in various ways, including spot checks in the general population to identify high-risk areas and prevent the second-wave scenario that is increasingly worrying health officials.
But she said that while the science will soon be in place, it will prove worthless if politicians don’t commit funds to implementing it. “The scientists will deliver the technology, and we need policymakers to follow,” she said.
There are two main lab processes needed to deal with coronavirus samples, and Habib’s lab is working to simplify both of them. The sequencing machines are intended for the second lab stage, when the ribonucleic acid (RNA) that has been extracted from test samples and which holds the key to test results, is analyzed.
But before the RNA can be analyzed it needs to be extracted from test samples. Habib’s team has also come up with a solution which she says can boost the capacity of labs for performing the extraction by up to ten times. It uses tiny magnetic beads instead of chemicals to extract the RNA.
A major impetus for this magnet solution was the fact that difficulty obtaining the compounds was slowing Israel’s testing operation, and Habib’s team wanted to make it resilient to international shortages.
The magnet solution is due to be implemented at a Hebrew University lab that processes tests for Hadassah Hospital, and Habib said that the Health Ministry has expressed interest in rolling it out nationally.
The norm in labs currently is to place each RNA sample, after extraction, in a separate test tube for analysis. Habib’s method involves combining samples into batches that can be examined using a sequencing machine — and she said it will need just a hundredth of the chemical compounds compared to current processes.
Habib, professor at Hebrew University’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Science, stressed that sequencing technology isn’t new but “needs to be adapted to the unique challenges of clinical coronavirus samples.” Her team is working on “nitty gritty” details that will allow existing technology to be deployed to batch test for coronavirus.