Tonight, the centers for disease control is reporting the first case of
Coronavirus has made it here in the US COVID-19 can be characterized as a
pandemic. The world now has more than a million confirmed cases of
COVID-19. More than 100,000 American lives lost the Coronavirus. The
confirmed COVID-19 death toll has now surpassed 1 million a dire picture
of a virus spiraling out of control shattering record. This virus was
especially insidious. We have 100,000 people in our ASU community. How are
we going to get them all tested? It was immensely gratifying the response
of the ASU community. Creating a BCT L was a massive undertaking that I
think could truly only happen at a university that's as interdisciplinary
as, as U is just a massive effort of volunteers and getting all of that up
and running. They were everything it would not have happened without them
to date. We've done over three quarters of a million tests in our lab.
This laboratory is on a par with the best clinical laboratories in the
country. We're here to save people's lives.
The whole point when you're in the middle of an epidemic is understanding
who has the infection and who might give it to somebody else. And the best
way to get at that is to have some way of testing people, making sure that
you can identify who's sick and who isn't a critical element to stopping
the virus is broad scale testing. Testing is not well understood by the
entire population. It is the essence of controlling the pandemic. If you
can't identify infected people and you can't remove them from the
transmission flow, then there is no hope of containing the virus. And this
virus was especially insidious because there were many, many individuals,
maybe 40% of the population that were infected that had no symptoms
whatsoever. So they thought they were well and they were just walking
around infecting other people. So the only way to identify them was
through testing
with rising cases and the urgent need for testing. The ABC TL was born in
the spring of 2020. It was apparent from what happened in China and from
what was even beginning to happen a little bit in Seattle and so on that
the need was testing was big and we would need something like that at a su.
And so I had conversations with President Crowe, for example, who was
asking me what are we going to do? We have 100,000 people in our A SU
community, how are we going to get them all tested? And so I started
having conversations with be Morrigan who is one of the professors in my
center. And it became clear that we had a lot of the technology that we
would need to do that kind of testing here. We had a call out for
individuals around the campus who had any kind of expertise that was
applicable to this kind of testing, which is by definition complex. It's a
molecular test and it required all kinds of support from people who would
run the systems that made it possible to collect the specimens to
transport the specimens, to test the specimens and to return the results
to patients. It was immensely gratifying the response of the A SU
community to come and meet this challenge. We had to make testing
available widely to the entire community. We had to make it free. We had
to make it not only accurate, but we required speed plus accuracy. You
can't remove an infected individual from the transmission of the virus if
they get their result from their test 10 days after you perform the test.
So we were able not only to perform a test that was incredibly specific
and sensitive, but we were able to do it in 48 hours or less. So that was
an essential ingredient to our success PC R testing and especially for
SARS CO V two, what we do is we actually extract all of the nucleic acids
contained within the sample. And then we use some pretty clever chemistry
to actually design probes that are attracted to the SARS CB two RN A. Once
those probes bind to the nucleic acids in your sample, they actually
amplify and then that fluorescent signal that they produce amplifies as
well. And so that's how we're actually able to detect the presence of SARS
CO V two in the sample. With such an ambitious goal, there were bound to
be challenges in pursuit of becoming a federally legal testing laboratory.
With funding being one of the main concerns. Funding for this effort was
clearly a challenge. We were ready to perform the testing, but it costs a
lot of money. And we received big grants from private foundations from the
State of Arizona. And we also received contract monies from essential
organizations like the power companies for whom testing was essential in
order to maintain a safe work environment so that they could provide us
with essential services. These services could not have been possible
without first jumping the hurdles of federally controlled quality and
ethics. Clear regulations assure that every clinical laboratory is
operating according to the highest scientific standards. It assures
patients that their tests are being performed in a controlled environment
with very high standards being addressed on every single level. The that
you're doing the reagents that you're using the environment, the training
of the individuals who are doing the test, all of this is regulated under
cle so we had to immediately make sure that we were compliant with all of
those federal regulations. And then there are the federal regulations that
deal with patient privacy. Patient privacy is extremely important.
Whenever you step into the clinical space, there's just a lot of
opportunity to obtain patient health information and it's our job to
protect it. We did a lot of things to first to make sure that we could
match the patient's identity back with their sample, right when they first
gave it. But also at the end, it's an effort to ensure that people can
have confidence in us as we manage their data part of reassuring and
strengthening this public confidence comes from the lab passing surprise
inspections with flying colors
early on in the evolution of the laboratory, it was the spring of of 2020
we had only been operating a couple of months but one Monday morning
unannounced two cli inspectors from the local office of CLI show up in the
laboratory to inspect all our processes. It was a bit anxiety provoking to
say the least, but we in fact, have spent four hours with the inspectors
going through all our standard operating procedures, all of our policies,
all of our data. And at the end of the day, even though we had only been
operating for four months, we passed our unannounced clear inspection. So
this was a moment of pride and also relief
cultivating a productive and sufficient supply chain became a difficult
process on day one, I was combing the internet looking for options for the
materials we needed gloves, the swabs themselves and everywhere we looked
, everything online was saying that they were, were essentially sold out
back ordered. I started contacting the various vendors that we are in
contact with here at a su and say, what can you get me? What options are
available? Everything was already sold out at that point giving us back
order dates of anywhere from six weeks to three months. At that point, we
did a massive donation request to the A SU community. We had donations
being dropped off here at the Bios Design Institute. Just a massive effort
of volunteers in the beginning, getting all of that up and running
today. Over a year after the start of the pandemic, the lab continues to
conduct around the clock testing in an effort to save lives. Currently,
the lab is running like a well oiled machine. We have really been able to
conquer every major and minor challenge that we were presented. This
laboratory is on a par with the best clinical laboratories in the country
throughout the entire process. We've really needed a goal to make the
process as efficient as possible. So we've done a lot of things where
we've examined all of our turnaround times examined when the samples come
into the lab looked at how long it takes to walk a piece of the instrument
from one side of the room. To the other, all of these things were timed
and broken down into their component parts and then really streamlined as
much as we can, whether it's by changing the program of the robotics so
that it uses 2.7 tips rather than 4.5 tips. We've done all of that
optimization by just really carefully looking at the data. Automation was
a heavy lift in being able to make the lab more efficient by combining
automation with human effort. The ABC TL was able to process thousands of
test samples per day to date. We've done over three quarters of a million
tests in our lab that would only have been possible by doing something
like saliva testing, which made it much easier for people to give their
samples. But you can't do that many samples. If you don't automate the
process, if you try to do those all by hand, the opportunity for error,
the opportunity for delays, the number of people you'd need to have
working in the lab would be just too great. And so we designed our process
from the beginning to run on robots and then we've just expanded that
process with more robots and more technology to go faster. We would
typically be sometimes doing anywhere between eight and 10,000 samples a
day. Imagine how much time it would take to unscrew the caps of 10,000
tube samples and manually take out the sample from each of those tubes.
It's just not possible in any kind of reasonable time scale.
Despite eventually gearing towards more automation, the need for community
contributions was still imperative. The ABC TL continued to hire even more
members and volunteers. The contribution of the workers, it was the
electricity that made this machine run people. Recognizing that there was
an emergent situation, being motivated to help, committed to help, having
the expertise and the energy to commit to the in the midst of a chaotic
situation, the volunteers that came to work in this laboratory, they were
everything it would not have happened without them. Training and
recruiting within this entire scenario has been super interesting because
we've had to work really closely with hr we've had to work really closely
with recruiters throughout the valley to try to get as many people in as
fast as we can. And once they're in the lab, we kind of use ac one do one
teach one method where people will shadow an experienced technician for a
while. And then after their shadowing period is over, they actually do
something that we call operator proficiency, which means that they are
observed doing a run, but the observer is totally hands off. They have to
do it all on their own. And then after that, they're actually cleared to
operate. The clinical test student. Volunteers were at the forefront of
these contributions, many of whom studied at the Edson College of Nursing
and Health Innovation,
the COVID-19 S survey was just an experience that we had where we were
able to go in and da P pe and help people with their saliva testing. So we
did everything from triaging and explaining like how to actually do the
test to turning in the test and keeping all of that organized and sending
it off to a lab to further be tested. My experience with it was very
positive, it was really enlightening. I had a really positive experience
getting to not only help my university but my community as well.
Communication was key in bringing together this group of professionals
and volunteers with diverse experiences and skill sets. It required not
only seamless processes being established and being monitored, but it
required seamless communication and teamwork among the people who were
carrying this out. This laboratory has brought together the most
extraordinary group of people and now I feel that we're bonded forever
as the ABC TL evolves. The lab hopes to match the constant changes of the
pandemic to better serve the community. More community outreach and future
research on COVID-19 is expected to come from a su
the evolution of this lab is still in progress and I would love to see us
expand our test menu. We are in a good place to do that. Now, we have the
expertise on board. We have all the equipment on board, all of the systems
on board. We have everyone trained to be able to collect specimens,
transport specimens. We also have the capacity to be able to do antibody
tests from blood to be able to judge whether or not someone has generated
an immune response that makes them protected against infection from the
virus, either because they had been infected and recovered or because they
got the vaccine. We're really excited about having developed a clinical
lab here at Bios Design Institute. The fact that we have a direct
connection now to people and being able to collect samples from them for
research purposes is outstanding. We're going to continue testing until
there's no need for more testing. We're expanding some of the tests that
we run including serology tests that tell us whether people developed
antibodies to the virus and what types of antibodies they developed to the
virus and then possibly adding additional tests to things like the flu and
other respiratory viruses that may have an impact on how COVID-19 behaves.
So we're going to continue developing the laboratory and building it as
we need to help support the community.
At the end of the day, the efforts of the ABC TL could not have been
accomplished without teamwork. The fact that so many individuals from
different backgrounds and professions are able to work together towards a
common humanitarian goal, speaks to a s us passion for innovation through
multidisciplinary efforts. Creating ABC TL was a massive undertaking that
I think could truly only happen at a university that's as
interdisciplinary as a SU is specifically within bios design, how
interdisciplinary, the whole nature of that building is. So we are a
diverse group of people with a diverse group of skills and we all work
really closely together and we have known each other since before the
pandemic. So I think the design of the university to be very
interdisciplinary, very intertwined with each other. That was the main
thing that made ABC TL so successful. In addition to just all the
tremendous support from administration, starting a clinical lab at a
university that that doesn't have a medical school is uncommon. We were
really fortunate to have great leadership with Doctor Lever, as well as Dr
Compton and Doctor Meru. And that really helped push this over the finish
line. And we had such great support from the state and some of our
partners because of all these people, their leadership and a lot of hard
work, we were able to ensure that people were getting the accurate results
that they needed during a pretty helpless time,
a year into the ever changing pandemic. One factor has stayed the same,
the lab's mission to save lives. They were doing was not just research for
the sake of research, but they were doing science and technology for the
sake of saving people's lives. To this day. We still say that at the end
of our meeting to remind ourselves what we're here for, we're here to save
people's lives. And that's what we feel. We are all doing. We are saving
lives. That is the biggest motivator that could exist for us. We are doing
something that is good and something that is humanitarian and something
that is necessary.
The ABC
we save lives.