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Ottawa company launches speedy test kit for legionnaires' disease

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A new DNA testing device made in Ottawa can cut the time it takes to test for legionnaires’ disease from more than a week to 45 minutes.

Spartan Bioscience Inc., with headquarters on Baseline Road, said this will allow owners of office towers, apartment buildings and shopping malls to get near-instant results of the test for the fatal disease.

Legionnaires’ disease is a severe form of pneumonia caused by a natural bacterium called legionella, which multiplies in the warm, humid environment of big ventilation systems.

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The bug can spread through the moisture in ventilation, but not from person to person. It is named for the 1976 convention of the American Legion in Philadelphia where it was first identified. It killed 29 people there.

Since then, tests for legionella have become part of a regular regime for many large building owners. New York City made weekly tests of cooling systems mandatory last year, following an outbreak that started in a South Bronx hotel, infected 127 people and killed 12 of them. But even with testing, another New York man died of Legionnaires’ this year.

One of the problems is that it can take two weeks or more to send samples to a lab and grow enough bacteria for the lab to count, said Spartan chief executive Paul Lem. In the meantime, the bacteria may be infecting people.

Instead, his firm’s cube-shaped device does a DNA analysis of a sample from the building’s cooling tower on the spot, without waiting for more bacteria to grow. It does not require a trained lab technician.

A cooling tower is a water-filled tank, often on the roof, where some water is evaporated to cool the remaining water.

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Because the water is warm and aerated, Lem said it can become a “bacterial broth.” Contaminated water droplets can be sucked back into the building and spread disease.

The company said regular testing for a year will cost somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000, largely because each test needs a single-use cartridge.

“It was a large property manager that approached us and said this is the big application,” Lem said. “What they told us was: It’s taking us 14 days to get the (lab) results and then on top of that another one to three days of shipping delay.”

Paul Lem, CEO of Spartan Bioscience Inc. in Ottawa, shows off the world’s smallest DNA analyzer that the local company has developed.
Paul Lem, CEO of Spartan Bioscience Inc. in Ottawa, shows off the world’s smallest DNA analyzer that the local company has developed.  Photo by Julie Oliver /Postmedia

Lem figures there are 100,000 buildings with cooling towers in the United States, and this represents one-third of the world market.

But the future goes beyond legionella. The Spartan Cube itself is a machine that can be used to analyze DNA and RNA in potentially thousands of types of bacteria and viruses. One early bacterium it can check for is the one that causes strep A infections.

“We think of it being like a video game console or an iPhone. You have the one console, one device, and then all the apps or all the tests are done on the same device,” Lem said.

Lem, a medical doctor, looks forward to the day when doctors’ offices and homes can have quick and affordable disease testing without sending samples to a laboratory.

tspears@postmedia.com

twitter.com/TomSpears1 

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