Imagine a world where detecting life-threatening viruses is as simple as a quick, affordable test, especially in areas with limited resources. That's the vision driving a groundbreaking project at the University of Central Florida (UCF). A multidisciplinary team has been awarded US $537,619 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a revolutionary electrochemical biosensor. This innovative device aims to simultaneously identify Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV infections, offering a lifeline in regions where access to advanced medical diagnostics is a challenge.
Early detection is crucial for managing many diseases, and this new technology promises to revolutionize how these viruses are detected. The UCF team, comprised of experts from the College of Medicine and the College of Sciences, plans to repurpose an existing electrochemical biosensor. This will allow them to identify these viruses at the ribonucleic acid (RNA) level and accurately measure viral loads, even in resource-constrained environments.
The global need for such a test is undeniable. According to the World Health Organization, over 300 million people are living with either Hepatitis B or C, and more than 40 million are living with HIV. Simultaneous testing has the potential to dramatically reduce viral transmission, enabling earlier diagnoses of hepatitis and consequently lowering the risk of severe complications like liver failure, cirrhosis, and liver cancer. Furthermore, the availability of faster, easier-to-use testing could break down barriers to patient care and assist clinicians in tailoring treatment plans.
"It’s very important to detect those viruses in the same sample because those viruses share the same route of transmission and it increases the chance that the same person may get multiple viruses," explains Dr. Yulia Gerasimova, an associate professor of chemistry working on the project. "Doctors need to know how to tailor the treatment for patients depending on if they have a co-infection or not."
Currently, diagnosing Hepatitis and HIV typically requires blood tests and analysis in a clinical laboratory. This process is often time-consuming and difficult in remote or low-resource areas, where results can take months to obtain. During this waiting period, patients may become sicker, and the infection can spread. But here's where it gets controversial: delays in diagnosis can have severe consequences.
"I think the goal is to have something that’s accessible worldwide – regardless of the environment," says Dr. Daniel Ram, an assistant professor of infectious disease at UCF, who is contributing to the project. "Having the capacity to detect multiple viruses at once really has potential to benefit everyone."
Dr. Ram's personal experiences, such as his mother directing a national clinic in Guyana, highlight the challenges faced in areas lacking the infrastructure for immediate sample processing. "In order to quantify viruses and patient samples, we would have to ship the samples out to Miami or sometimes Trinidad and Tobago. During shipping those samples degraded and the possibility for failure is high. In the meantime, doctors didn’t know how to best treat the patients."
The UCF team aims to reshape patient care by making diagnostics more accessible and affordable. Dr. Karin Chumbimuni-Torres, associate professor of chemistry and project lead, explains that their sensor technology will detect viruses via RNA rather than relying on current blood tests. They envision that samples, such as blood, can be screened directly with the sensor.
Dr. Chumbimuni-Torres has previously developed similar sensor technology to detect Dengue fever and the Zika virus disease. Her preliminary results enabled her to secure NIH funding for the Hepatitis and HIV work. Because HIV mutates frequently, the UCF scientists have designed their sensor to detect any serotype of the disease. "This is key," says Dr. Chumbimuni-Torres. "HIV can mutate a lot so we made a technique that can detect any of the mutations."
By conducting genetic testing on the viruses, the scientists can target the specific genetic sequences of both viruses. "We want to quantify the virus so doctors can know how to treat patients," Dr. Chumbimuni-Torres adds. And this is the part most people miss: the ability to quantify viral loads is crucial for effective treatment.
Dr. Gerasimova emphasizes that the team is working to ensure the technology will work regardless of the viral genome source. "We’re using something called isothermal amplification to amplify viral nucleic acids for them to be detected with virus-specific probes," she says. "This project is more or less exploratory and we’re developing and fine-tuning our technique along the way."
Dr. Ram's role involves characterizing the viruses and determining how best to measure viral load from a patient's serum, while his collaborators assess the efficacy of the sensor technology. "We want to test whether or not the sensors can detect certain amounts of virus and how that would relate to how that may manifest in patients," he explains. "For this round of experimentation we need to validate with cell cultures and having different quantified amounts of the viruses. Knowing how many viral particles it’s able to detect will allow us to move forward in assessing a patient cohort."
As the research progresses, Dr. Ram sees the potential for the test to improve the lives of patients worldwide. "This technology has immediate benefit if we can show it to work effectively in detecting multiple viruses," he states.
Dr. Chumbimuni-Torres, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at UCF, brings a wealth of experience, having earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. She has held postdoctoral research positions at Purdue University and the University of California, San Diego, and worked at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on sensor chemistry for biological applications, including analyzing micro-RNAs, RNA, and DNA.
Dr. Gerasimova, an associate professor in the UCF Department of Chemistry, leads the Nucleic Acid Function and Diagnostics Laboratory. She earned her doctoral degree in bio-organic chemistry from the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia. She joined UCF in 2010 as a post-doctoral researcher.
Dr. Ram, an assistant professor of medicine at UCF’s Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, studies how infection and disease affect RNA-splicing and lead to dysfunctional immune responses. He obtained his PhD in Immunology at Tufts University in 2016 and served as a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School in Boston before joining UCF in 2023.
The project is providing a promising path to a new diagnostic solution for simultaneous detection of Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV infection in settings where traditional laboratory infrastructure is limited.
What are your thoughts on this innovative approach? Do you think this technology could significantly impact global health? Share your opinions in the comments below!
