ASU is leading the development of technology that can quickly assess the amount of radiation of thousands of people have suffered after a radiological disaster.
This technology will process the samples within a few hours and allow physicians to effectively treat the sick.
“Compared to existing methodologies that are out there, this is orders of magnitude faster than other methods that have been used,” said Carl Yamashiro, principal investigator of the research project.
Yamashiro works Biodesign Institute at ASU Tempe campus and helps manage the research project that collaborates with seven other institutions in the five-year project that began last month.
The research project is important so that people can be treated quickly and to reduce panic, “said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University.
“If there was a radiological event, the goal of terrorists is essential to create panic and chaos,” he said. ”If you could reassure people by giving them a very quick test .In a way that is defeating the bad guys.”
Brenner is also Director of Medical Radiation Center (WCAR), which is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and manages its research center, which began in 2005 and led to the current research at ASU.
The research center is similar to ASU because it will allow medical personnel to accurately treat people exposed to radiation, he said. ASU has contributed to this research over the past four years.
Yamashiro said the research team is working with subcontractors Tecan Group Ltd. to create a box that can hold the whole system to allow scientists to analyze up to 2,000 people per day per instrument to measure exposure to radiation.
To measure, individuals would have a small amount of blood taken, that a special kind of chemistry can help scientists understand the effects of radiation, Yamashiro said.
The processing time would be in hours, compared with the days of the previous investigation. Other technologies are unable to process the results that the future of the “box” will, “he said.
The first step of research is to demonstrate that blood taken from people affected by radiation can be produced in the period of one week after a radiological event and remain effective in a few hours.
U.S. The Department of Health and Human Services, Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) in the research project gave a prize of U.S. $ 40.8 million.
Yamashiro said that scientists can observe the genes to measure how people are affected by radiation.
“The assumption is that you will get different types of cellular responses depending on the type of harm that [radiation] induces,” he said.
The tools used to identify and provide effective treatment for radiation could also have other medical applications.
“We have a large number of tests that are now in development in general, cancer and infectious diseases that runs with the same technology,” said Bruce Seligmann, founder and chief scientist of high performance Genomics, Inc., one for other subcontractors.
Hospitals want the technology, because the routine tests that run faster and with more samples, he said. When necessary, cases also can test thousands of people from exposure to radiation.
“At the end of five years, he’s not ready to be in the clinic, but is under way,” Yamashiro said.
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