DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF News ) – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas developed a new COVID-19 test that identifies different variants of the virus in four hours.
In the past, doctors may not have known which SARS-CoV-2 variant a patient was infected with at the onset of treatment.
Dr. Jeffrey SoRelle said the new test, called CoVarScan, allows doctors to make sure that the proper monoclonal antibody treatments are being used to treat the specific variant infecting the patient.
“This first came up in December when previously used antibody therapies for the Delta variant were no longer effective against Omicron. It happened again when the second BA.2 variant from Omicron was then resistant to that antibody called Satrovimab. So ,we can anticipate that this won’t be the last time this happens that variants evolve past both our acquired immunity and the antibodies that we have to give people to prevent them from getting worse disease,” he said.
Dr. SoRelle and his colleagues startedd and tested the device on more than 4,000 patient samples collected at UT Southwestern.
Doctors use a process called whole genome sequencing to figure out which type of SARS-CoV-2 a person is infected with. It take can take up to four weeks to get the results and is very expensive.
Dr. SoRolle said their test streamlines the process in several ways.
“Unlike sequencing it can be performed much faster and more cheaply than many other methods. We can do this by using just about eight special targets to hot spot regions of the COVID genome that are frequently mutated in these variants,” he said.
UT Southwestern’s Once Upon a Time Human Genomics Center helped local public health officials track COVID-19 across the region, who used the information to make policy decisions based on which variants were prevalent.
The test is being used at UT Southwestern and the goal is to bring CoVarScan to the commercial market. Dr. Sorell has a patent on the test and receives royalties on it.
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