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September 29, 2006 Vol. 77,
no. 7F
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| TEAM ECUADOR: Members are, from left, BioE Ph.D. student Anat Caspi, public health master’s student Susie Welty, BioE Ph.D. student Tanner Nevill and BioE Ph.D. student Nick Toriello. PHOTO
PROVIDED BY TANNER NEVILL
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BioE team brings research, questions to Ecuador
Lab-on-a-chip offers hope for combating dengue fever
Last year, BioE Ph.D. candidate Tanner Nevill stood up at a Bridging
the Divide infosession and talked about a tiny device he’d been
working on with BioE associate professor Luke Lee. (Bridging the Divide
is a fellowship program that funds graduate student teams doing research
on applications of technology in developing regions.) Nevill’s
prototype was essentially a lab-on-a-chip, an inexpensive, portable
and disposable system that can detect the presence of infectious disease.
Well suited for developing regions, Nevill explained, it offers an
easy and cheap way to diagnose diseases on the spot without a lab.
After the meeting, fellow BioE Ph.D. candidates Anat Caspi and Nick
Toriello, who work in the same field, approached Nevill about applying
for a fellowship together. The team then pondered a specific problem
to attack, debating different diseases and locales. But a direction
wasn’t found until a friend introduced them to Susie Welty, a
master’s student in the School of Public Health focusing on developing-world
diseases. A native of Ecuador, where her missionary parents still live,
Welty speaks fluent Spanish. The team had found its fourth member and
its focus: dengue fever. Dengue is a viral, mosquito-borne infectious
disease common to tropical regions. In Ecuador, it’s endemic
and had recently flared to epidemic proportions.
After receiving their fellowship, the group traveled to Ecuador in
August. They interviewed health care providers and officials to understand
the health care system and determine the viability of using the microdevice
to detect dengue. Members learned it currently takes a week or more
to identify a strain through laboratory tests, too late to prevent
outbreaks. And most people are forced to rely on public clinics and
hospitals, which are underfunded. The microdevice could have an impact,
the team believed, especially in rural areas in northern Ecuador. Doctors
and clinicians gave it a positive reception and provided useful feedback.
The team chronicled their travels in a blog. “After a good night’s
sleep we woke at 7:30 a.m. and searched for breakfast,” wrote Nevill
about a visit to the village of Borbon. “Since the only thing we
could find was fried meat and intestines, we settled on coffee. Our tour
of the hospital and meetings with the director were very successful.
We stayed there until 11 a.m. doing interviews, when we had to run to
catch our boat to the next village. The boat ride to Zapallo Grande was
long. Four and a half hours in a canoe did not do much for our bodies.”
Now back in Berkeley, the researchers are finishing their report and
returning to their own research. That includes further development of
the microdevice, which is years away from implementation. Still, the
trip bore fruit.
“
I find it motivating that this technology has a place,” says Nick
Toriello. “It will end up somewhere besides the annals of academic
thesis lore.”
Read more on the trip at http://bioeng.berkeley.edu/ecuador06.php.
For more information on Bridging the Divide, go to http://bridge.berkeley.edu/.
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