Cheaper, faster test trades uncomfortable nose swab for spit-in-a-tube simplicity in effort to detect virus before it spreads

CU Boulder researchers have developed a rapid, portable, saliva-based COVID-19 test that can return results in 45 minutes and is easily used in community settings like schools and factories.

“We are facing a serious testing shortage in this country as more people want to get tested and diagnostics labs are overwhelmed,” said Nicholas Meyerson, a postdoctoral associate in the Sawyer Lab at the BioFrontiers Institute at CU Boulder. “We’ve developed a COVID-19 screening test that could get results to people much faster, easier and cheaper.”

The test, described in a posted on the online archive MedRxiv.org, is designed for widespread screening of people who show no symptoms. Research shows people infected with the virus but with no obvious symptoms make up as many as 70% of cases and can still spread disease. 

Developing ways to identify those cases early is key to reopening schools and the economy, and containing the spread of the virus, said Professor Sara Sawyer, a virologist in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology who led the development of the test. 

“Most tests approved to date require that the sample, even if it’s saliva, be processed using sophisticated equipment in a clinical diagnostic lab or at a doctor’s office. That can take days,” she said.

In the new test, the user drools saliva into a tube and hands it off to testing staff to process it through a simple system requiring little more than pipettes, a heat source and an enzyme mixture. 

If the sample turns from pink to yellow, the test is positive. If it doesn’t, it’s negative.

Because no swabs or fancy laboratory equipment are needed, the tests are also less vulnerable to backlogs and supply chain shortages.

The test is based on a 20-year-old technology known as reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP). It has been used to screen mosquitoes for the Zika virus in remote regions of South America and in other applications.

To process, the saliva is added to three tubes, each containing a custom enzyme mixture. When heated to a certain temperature, the mixture undergoes a chemical reaction when the genetic material from SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—is detected.

In one experiment described in the paper, the researchers conducted what is known as a “contrived clinical validation.” One researcher spiked 30 out of 60 saliva samples with inactivated SARS-CoV-2 in the lab, then shuffled the samples and gave them to another scientist to test with the RT-LAMP technology.

“The test predicted with 100% accuracy all of the negative samples, and 29 of 30 positive samples were predicted accurately,” Meyerson said.

While the test is slightly less sensitive than those performed in clinical labs, a separate computer modeling study found that quick turnaround is even more critical to curbing the pandemic than test sensitivity.

“Our modeling showed that whether a test is sensitive or super-sensitive is not that important,” said BioFrontiers Director Roy Parker, co-author of that . “What is important is frequent testing, with the test results returned as fast as possible, which identifies more infected people faster and can limit new infections.”

Those who test positive could quarantine themselves as they await confirmatory testing, Sawyer said.

The research team, with support from Venture Partners at CU Boulder, has created a spinoff company, Darwin Biosciences, to commercialize the test. 

“While we are all very optimistic about a coronavirus vaccine, scientists have been working on an HIV vaccine for 30 years without success,” Sawyer said. “Meantime, the HIV pandemic showed us that pervasive testing, out in the community and not just at hospitals or urgent cares, can make a big difference.”

Principal Investigator
Sara Sawyer

Funding
National Institutes of Health

Collaboration + support
BioFrontiers Institute; Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; Venture Partners at CU Boulder; Darwin Biosciences

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As coronavirus cases mounted in Colorado, several dozen 3D printers on the CU Boulder campus roared back to life to make personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers on the front lines of the crisis.

A small team of volunteer engineers and students took on the project, making the plastic bands that hold together face shields, plastic barriers that cover the eyes, nose and mouth, which can help keep nurses and doctors from picking up infections.

“The supply chain for a lot of this equipment has broken down. We’re trying to help fill that gap,” said Mark Borden, a professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering.

The effort is part of a that advises makers across Colorado on how to create safe and effective PPE using high-tech tools like 3D printers and laser cutters.

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A new CU Boulder initiative, COventure Forward, is determined to help Colorado’s small businesses hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

“When the COVID-19 crisis first hit us, we knew this would turn many entrepreneurs’ lives upside down and would bring new and difficult challenges,” said Scott Fox, an entrepreneur in the cellular and wireless industries and an entrepreneur-in-residence at Venture Partners at CU Boulder.

Launched in April 2020 by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business, COventure Forward connects small businesses, startups, scale-ups and entrepreneurs with a cadre of seasoned faculty members and business leaders able to mentor struggling businesses at no charge.

“Most of these mentors have navigated downturns in the past,” said Erick Mueller, executive director of the Deming Center. “Now they can share their expertise and guide newer businesses through those challenges.”

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Daniel Larremore, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and in the BioFrontiers Institute, relies on math to track the spread of human diseases. In April, Larremore joined a nationwide study that is using social media data to better understand how the coronavirus spreads.

The draws on huge volumes of anonymized location information supplied by Facebook to explore how groups of people move from spot to spot over time. That data allows the researchers to build maps that show where people are still traveling in the age of social distancing.

He and his colleagues will provide these maps to local public health leaders so they can craft more efficient policies to help slow the spread of the virus.

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COVID-19 may be able to travel from person to person through tiny particles floating in the air, according to a from across the globe.

The international team, which includes six CU Boulder faculty members, lays out evidence showing how tenacious the pathogen behind COVID-19 can be: The virus, the group says, can likely drift through and survive in the air, especially in crowded, indoor spaces with poor ventilation.

“Once droplets carrying the virus become small enough, they can stay in the air for minutes or even hours, and we can breathe them in during that time if we are in the same room,” said Jose-Luis Jimenez, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and a fellow in the (CIRES).

“More than 200 scientists from different disciplines and from around the world read our letter and overwhelmingly agreed to sign on,” said Shelly Miller, a professor in the Environmental Engineering Program and the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering who also signed the letter.

An improved understanding of how the coronavirus spreads may lead to better strategies for slowing the pandemic, including improving ventilation and installing indoor air filters.

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Distributing a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine may be even more challenging than developing it, which is why CU Boulder researchers and the CU spinoff are so focused on finding a way to get vaccines to 7.8 billion people.

The researchers are focused on a vaccine-manufacturing platform technology that addresses the need for temperature-stable, single-dose formulations of novel COVID-19 vaccines at the scale required for large human clinical trials.

The research team is able to do so with funding, licensing and startup support from Venture Partners at CU Boulder, the university’s commercialization arm. They also received a grant from the Boettcher Foundation, which has awarded nearly $1 million to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It has to be a solution that is suitable for the entire world,” said project lead Theodore Randolph, Gillespie Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

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The CU Boulder research community, already equipped to tackle the toughest problems in the universe—think space, climate change and quantum science—turned its attention to challenges closer to home in 2020. From deploying innovative wastewater monitoring of campus buildings and improving ventilation in classrooms to developing homegrown rapid screening tools and contributing to community testing strategies, CU Boulder faculty, staff and students collaborated in extraordinary ways to face unprecedented challenges.

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In a time of uncertainty and ever-changing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in schools, many education scholars and schools are turning to research to help guide the way and reduce inequities in education.

The , based in the School of Education, sponsors the school recognition program for high schools using research-based methods to close opportunity gaps. As schools nationwide moved to remote or hybrid learning in response to the pandemic, NEPC found that Schools of Opportunity innovated rapidly to holistically serve students and families.

Schools went beyond academics to address vulnerabilities created or exacerbated by the pandemic, such as food and housing uncertainties and unemployment. Many mobilized to offer laptops, district-provided home Wi-Fi, free grab-and-go meals, legal and unemployment guidance, emergency child care centers, and more.

Because families often rely on schools for more than academics, Professor of Education and NEPC Director Kevin Welner cautions that, even given the dire state of the economy and public revenues, this is not a time for an austere approach to school financing. Rather, now is a time to invest in public schools, particularly those working with historically underserved populations.

“There are accumulated harms being done disproportionately to lower wealth and minoritized communities—everything from the actual disease hitting harder to higher levels of unemployment,” Welner said.

“If our schools in these communities are trying to find money just to create a safe learning environment, how are they also going to find the additional resources to address the accumulated needs of their students and families?”

The pandemic has highlighted the learning loss resulting from shifts to online education. A new study led by Allison Atteberry, assistant professor of education, discovered that after years of study, we still don’t fully understand the wide variance of “summer learning loss.”

Atteberry and co-authors found that 52% of students in grades 1–6 experienced learning loss across five consecutive summers. Given that many students have not physically attended school for much of spring and fall—what could be considered “an unusually long summer”—this is “deeply concerning” for achievement disparities, she said.

“COVID-19 can seem like something we all experience equally together, but research is starting to disabuse us of these naive notions,” Atteberry said. “Summer learning loss is just one more example of how this crisis will exacerbate outcome inequality.”

Atteberry says teachers are ahead of researchers and policymakers in addressing summer learning loss as they engage in the daily, difficult work of teaching. She and many education scholars believe this a moment to support teachers and reimagine new models of schooling.

William Penuel, professor of education, notes this is not the first time that disruptions in education have led to new ideas with staying power. For example, after World War II, Italian parents founded a new caring and collaborative form of child care, the Reggio Emilia model, that still exists today, he said.

“We need such models now, something that helps us break away from the idea that the way schools look today is what they have to look like in the future,” he said.

In these times marked by a pandemic and racial injustice, Penuel believes we are collectively learning about new models of education and research-based approaches that honor the experiences of educators and students.

“This experience has helped many parents realize that the work of teaching is complex, and students have missed what makes school a good place for many of them,” he said.

“But for many students, the worst thing would be to go ‘back to normal.’ Normal wasn’t working for them. . . . We need to find models of anti-racist pedagogies so that we can demonstrate how they can be enacted with integrity in schools. All of these things are really about building caring and compassionate school communities, not just returning to school as we knew it, and we have a lot to learn about how to create such communities.”

Principal Investigators
Allison Atteberry; William Penuel; Kevin Welner

Funding
Kingsbury Center at the Northwest Evaluation Association; Smith Richardson Foundation; Institute of Education Science

Collaboration + support
School of Education; National Center for Research in Policy and Practice; National Education Policy Center

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In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, water indiscriminately flooded the homes of Houston residents, but financial help did not pour in as equally.

Leeds School of Business researchers found that lower-income homeowners were most likely to end up in a worse financial position and at a higher risk of bankruptcy after the storm, due to unequal access to federal disaster assistance and loans.

Wealthier homeowners were more likely to have flood insurance and be able to navigate the complex requirements to file for disaster funds and loans. Residents in lower-income neighborhoods also commonly received less disaster assistance, even if they qualified for it.

“In allocating a limited pool of resources, the way we're handing it out seems to be distorted,” said assistant professor of finance Emily Gallagher.

Image credits: A Marine, a member of the Texas Highway Patrol and Texas State Guard escort a couple to higher ground, Houston, Texas, Aug. 31, 2017 / U.S. Department of Agriculture. Aerial photo of Houston flooding / USACE HQ. Flooded Houston street / Marines. A house in Houston shows visible damage after flooding / Getty Images. Members of the South Carolina's Helicopter Aquatic Rescue Team (SC-HART) perform rescue operations in Port Arthur, Texas, August 31, 2017 / SC National Guard.

Principal Investigator
Emily Gallagher

Collaboration + support
Leeds School of Business, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

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CU Boulder student works with community to honor Chicano activists killed in 1974

In the span of less than 48 hours in May 1974, two car bombings killed six Chicano activists in Boulder.

On May 27 at Chautauqua Park, an explosion took the lives of University of Colorado Boulder law school graduate Reyes Martinez; CU junior Neva Romero; and CU alumna Una Jaakola. Two days later, a bomb tore apart a car at a parking lot on 28th Street, killing CU graduate Florencio Granado and incoming students Heriberto Teran and Francisco Dougherty, and seriously injuring Antonio Alcantar.

More than a half-century later, the case remains unsolved. And for most of that time, “Los Seis de Boulder” had gone unrecognized on campus.

Jasmine Baetz, then a Master of Fine Arts student and part of CU’s Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars program, first learned about Los Seis from a documentary she saw as a freshman.

“I couldn’t believe this happened here, six students died, and they weren’t memorialized on campus,” she says. Baetz vowed to change that, and less than two years later, she did. In July 2019, a ceramic mosaic memorial she created in collaboration with hundreds of students, faculty, community members and families of Los Seis was unveiled in front of Temporary Building No. 1, just northwest of the Rec Center.

Baetz served as maestro of the two-year collaboration, in which community members did everything from roll out sheets of clay to cut and smooth pieces, which were then fired in a kiln. After glazing and refiring, the pieces were laid out on printed portraits of Los Seis.

“Jasmine wasn’t just saying she wanted community involvement; she really created community,” says participant Michelle Jaakola Steinwand, 71, of Boulder, Una Jaakola’s sister.

Baetz initially secured permission from campus officials for a six-month temporary installation. After students protested a March decision to designate the sculpture “indefinitely temporary,” CU officials announced Sept. 16 that it will remain on permanent display in its current location as part of the University Libraries’ Special Collections, Archives and Preservation department.

“The people I encountered have been supportive and really feel this is an important thing to have on campus,” Baetz says.

Baetz acknowledges sensitivity, even controversy, surrounding Los Seis. Police and FBI investigators at the time believed the activists were killed while building bombs after months of tension between the university and Chicano activists. But a later grand jury investigation into survivor Alcantar found no basis for an indictment.

“It’s never been crystal clear to me,” Steinwand says. But she remains skeptical of investigators’ claims: “Two accidental bombings? The case falls apart at that point for most logical people.”

For Baetz, lack of resolution doesn’t mean Los Seis shouldn’t be memorialized.

“These were students, activists, people,” she says. “It’s important to both remember the contributions they made to this campus and that they were people who were loved by their families and communities.”

Baetz says the memorial reflects the more enlightened ethics of the 21st century while still reckoning honestly with a critical moment of CU and Boulder history.

“Literal and symbolic space must be established for minoritized students, communities and histories on campus for an equitable future,” she says.

For Steinwand, the memorial has provided an opportunity to reestablish a “heartfelt connection” with her sister. It may have “different meaning for different people,” she says, but that’s a good thing.

“To educate and celebrate, create a space that’s really significant to this story,” she says, “that’s part of what Jasmine (has done).”

Principal Investigator
Jasmine Baetz, Master of Fine Arts student

Collaboration + support
Engaged Arts and Humanities Student Scholar Program; University Libraries’ Special Collections; students, faculty, community members and families of Los Seis de Boulder

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