The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global medical and economic crisis. Laboratory testing capacity has played pivotal role in our national response to this emergency. The shift from targeted, clinically oriented testing to widespread high-throughput community testing may dramatically increase the need for affordable COVID19 tests. Although many new assays are coming online, most of the existing and emerging diagnostic tests work by detecting the SARS-CoV-2 genetic material and ultimately will suffer from the same supply chain limitations. To address this, the project is developing an alternative proteomics-based assay for detecting the virus directly from nasal swabs. Their proteomics strategy does not require any specialized supplies and could enable up to 1,000 tests per day per instrument, potentially alleviating bottlenecks which could occur with currently used diagnostic tests.
ActiveHealth
Expanding the Use of Genomics to Unravel Rare Diseases: Care4Rare EXPAND
Competition/Funding OpportunityGenome Canada - Canadian Precision Health Initiative (CPHI) Pillar 1: Generating population-level genomic data
Project Lead(s)/Co-Lead(s)Kym Boycott (University of Ottawa/Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute), Christian Marshall (University of Toronto/Hospital for Sick Children), Francois Bernier (University of Calgary), Jacques Michaud (Université de Montréal/CHU Ste Justine)
