BC Undergraduate research aids in disease diagnosis

In the summer of 2007, Dr. Paul Yager, who was working on a project for the detection of fever causing diseases, invited a handful of students to his bioengineering lab at the University of Washington. Among the select few to win a spot on his research team was Camille Petri, A&S '09, and the only undergraduate chosen. She was selected to take part in the Amgen Scholars Program, which takes some students interested in participating in biological research at the industrial level and gives them an opportunity to gain firsthand experience.

Yager's lab dealt with the problems encountered in diagnosing diseases in underdeveloped countries. Some very similar diseases manifest the same symptoms, such as a fever, and present difficulties in diagnosis. Therefore, it is essential to get an accurate, quick diagnosis. This cannot be done in many places because of the lack of sophisticated medical equipment and the controlled conditions necessary for carrying out these tests. Yager lab's mission was to create a method to test for diseases like malaria in a way that could be done easily, without specialized equipment or controlled environments.

"I picked the lab for two reasons. First, because I had been to Africa on a service trip previously and saw the impact that this kind of research could have there," Petri said. "I also liked the idea of creating new technology that wasn't too expensive for people in underdeveloped nations to be able to use."

"One of the biggest problems for nations without good medical care is incorrect diagnosis. We need to be able to diagnose correctly to treat the disease correctly," Petri said. "Otherwise, lots of time and resources can be wasted." It was these problems that led Yager to begin research on ways to bring testing for malaria and other fever causing diseases to the "point of care."

Petri worked with Yager and a team of graduate students to reduce the diagnosis process for malaria down to a simple test that could be carried out on a small, credit card-sized apparatus. "Normally, these tests are done using lots of separate pieces of equipment," Petri said. There are also numerous buffers and solutions also used to test blood samples for malaria and other diseases that share fever as a symptom. All of this contributes to the fact that it is not easy to diagnose patients in less developed countries. The lab aimed to reduce this complex testing process down to a simple procedure involving placing a drop of the patient's blood into one of the micro-channels on the card and simply looking at an indicator, also contained in the card, that would turn red if the patient is infected with the disease.

Petri's research involved the development of the card test for malaria, but in the future, she believes others on Yager's team and at other labs will develop tests for other, similar diseases. She said that the ultimate goal of all of this is to have a test that is relatively simple and can be done at the point of treatment, leading to quicker and more accurate diagnoses, focusing treatment.

There were numerous challenges facing Petri and the rest of the team. The first was to get the test down to a small scale. "There are problems of bubbles occurring or the fluid not spreading evenly, and the issue of whether the indicator will even recognize the disease in such a small amount," Petri said. Another main issue was the temperature at which the cards would be stored. "We wanted to use materials that were stable at very extreme temperatures since the weather in many areas of the world where this would be used is frequently very hot. With the current testing method, the different solutions need to be kept in controlled temperature environments. To make the tests more versatile and even more capable of being used in less than ideal situations, Petri and the others had to find materials that still produced an accurate result after being stored at very high temperatures. "We stored a bunch of different materials at high temperatures for extended periods of time and looked to see which ones still worked when we ran tests with them," Petri said. "When we found one that worked, we were extremely happy."

Petri said that her summer of research was an invaluable experience in putting her classroom skills to practical use. "It also showed me how to appreciate research," she said. While she plans to attend medical school instead of continuing with biomedical research, she said that she enjoyed participating in this program a lot because she got to see that her research could have a direct impact on the quality of people's lives.