03/17/2020
RICHMOND SHARE WIDELY! BIG DEAL!
Indie Lab is trying to build a testing site in Richmond and is already building ventilators. They need our mass support. This is amazing work.
Donate whatever you can. 100k needed.
This is expensive so hit up your privileged friends and family to help.
“I wanted to provide members of the board and the advisory committee with an update on lab activities as the covid-19 pandemic has reached central Virginia and nearly every state in the country (all but West Virginia). I want this to be taken as a sober assessment of the situation and document our efforts to support community protection and health.
We were uniquely positioned to shift activities to pandemic response and are working with local authorities, community members, and international scientists, engineers, and medical personnel to expand covid-19 testing apparatus in the state. We currently have a team of 15 people locally building the effort- for this part alone- in addition to the expanded team from across the world.
The current CDC testing protocol uses quantitative PCR analysis for detection, and recent developments around Roche expanding testing are- to my knowledge- continuations of that testing methodology. We have contact with Chai Bio to begin acquiring/building and deploying qPCR systems using open-source plans. To expand the rate of testing we are working with Opentrons to place high-throughput sample extraction equipment in Richmond to meet the same 10,000/day sample capacity presented by Roche on Friday. This is in line with the methods described by Opencell Bio in London, UK in tandem with Opentrons. We can both build and receive Opentrons built systems (1 week lead) once we have adequate placement arranged.
We are looking to assist validation of rapid CRISPR-based detection and are in communication with Mammoth Bio about assisting with sample trials/validation to move the process through approval. The bottleneck in RNA extraction kits (such as those made by Qiagen) makes it essential to expand testing capabilities to new platforms and this is a highly promising candidate.
Following the work we were already doing to get facilities in place for Librecycle! (re: PSA gas generating systems), we're also working to finish our PSA prototype rapidly to enhance oxygen supplies locally and have fabricators available to build essential components. We have connected with an international project working on the same systems to crowdsource the plans, source code, and other necessary (though we already have most of what we need). It may be more worthwhile to source whole systems at this juncture, but we're looking at all of our options and want to be prepared- prebuilt or not- in case of shortages as are described in outbreak regions.
We're working with local and international groups to enhance production of ventilators, as well.
We're organizing collection logistics with community groups, establishing testing locations to safely collect, transport, and store samples. Richmond residents are already reporting that they are turned away from tests despite being symptomatic due to Virginia Health Department policy. We wish to test as many residents as possible or- in the event that our testing apparatus falls through- collect as much data for later analysis to assist with containment.
All of this takes time, money, and additional physical resources that we currently lack. We are asking this community to help leverage for success on this work. That includes:
- grant writing
- direct donations (paypal preferred @ www.indielab.co, or the patreon link in my signature)
- outreach.
- support to access CLIA certified, BSL3 laboratory space, with physical building not out of the question in the coming months if external space cannot be arranged locally. The state lab told me personally they are at capacity on space in the required facilities. I know one of the workers in the MCV/VCU virology lab and am trying to coordinate access there. Outside of those options there's not much currently available in the city, though other hospitals and private labs still need to be contacted.
We welcome critical commentary and suggestions to better assist with orchestration, and are happy to directly discuss any of our work as time allows. The sooner we act, the better we control this.
-- Cheers, Bill Slavin, Ph.D. Executive Director Indie Lab, (804) 516-6944 Web: http://www.indielab.co || https://www.patreon.com/indielab”
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