Border Protector Michael J. Fisher - KMI Media Group

Since 1998, Idaho Technology has fielded
sensitive and reliable biosurveillance products
that span the range of operations from
the lab to the field, and from clinical diagnostics
to environmental surveillance.
Q: Who is Idaho Technology and how do you
help with the mission of the Department of
Homeland Security?
A: Idaho Technology Inc. [ITI] is a privately
held molecular diagnostics company that
specializes in supplying easy-to-use biological
identification systems. Over the past 22 years,
we have developed and patented cuttingedge
technology for analyzing and detecting
genetic material and licensed our technology
to notable diagnostic companies such as
Roche Diagnostics. We also have an extensive
history working with the U.S. government
and we supply key components for U.S.
biosurveillance initiatives, the most notable
being the Joint Biological Agent Identification
and Diagnostic System [JBAIDS], which
is the biothreat identification and diagnostics
standard for the U.S. military. We collaborate
with other U.S. agencies such as Health
and Human Services and the Department
of Homeland Security to provide biosurveillance
tools to first responders that allow them
to more effectively protect U.S. citizens. Firefighters,
hazmat, police, military and public
health use our equipment to quickly and
reliably identify biological threats.
Q: Why should we be concerned about a
biological attack?
A: A biological attack is the most probable
and potentially has the highest impact when
compared to other attack scenarios. Sure,
a nuclear bomb will cause devastation, but
the probability of a nuclear attack is very
low since nuclear materials are very difficult
to obtain. In contrast, it is relatively easy
to carry out a biological attack since many
threat agents occur naturally in the environment
and only trace amounts of materials
are required to cause harm. And the potential
impact can be enormous along with
the threat to national security, considering
that some pathogens can spread quickly
28 | BCD 1.1
INDUSTRY INTERVIEW Border & CBRNE Defense
Lou Banks
BioSurveillance Marketing Manager
Idaho Technology Inc.
throughout the population and lead to fear
and paranoia fueled by the inability to detect
infection until symptoms manifest days later.
This is precisely why numerous intelligence
agencies have warned of an impending biological
attack and the U.S. government through
various presidential initiatives has formulated
a National Strategy for Countering Biological
Threats.
Q: How does Idaho Technology support the
National Strategy for Countering Biological
Threats?
A: A key component of the U.S. biosurveillance
strategy is to provide accurate and
timely information on current and emerging
threats. Threats can be identified in a
number of operational scenarios from field
environmental samples to clinical samples
in a lab. Idaho Technology offers a suite of
biosurveillance systems to cover all these
operational scenarios. For field applications,
Razor EX provides a reliable and fast platform
for identifying bioterrorism threats. It
employs the same real-time PCR technology
used in Public Health Labs, but designed for
use by non-scientific personnel to identify
10 category A and B biothreats in 30 minutes.
JBAIDS resides in a garrison setting
and allows sophisticated users to have the
system flexibility and throughput needed to
test a multitude of samples for many targets.
Idaho Technology’s newest instrument, The
FilmArray, is designed for fixed or mobile
labs to analyze clinical samples for panels
of pandemic and public health pathogens of
interest.
Q: How does your equipment aid the field
incident commander?
A: Incident commanders are put in a tough
situation. Public health can take days to
definitively identify a suspected biological
agent and meanwhile, they are charged with
keeping the public safe while balancing economic
concerns—it is very expensive to shut
down a building or an airport terminal. Razor
EX provides fast, reliable results and this
information taken with other information
gathered at the scene helps in making better
decisions. Suspected biological samples will
still be sent to the lab for confirmatory analysis,
but presumptive results allow incident
commanders to posture a response while they
wait for results from the lab and ultimately
lead to a faster response, which saves lives.
Q: What are some of the challenges associated
with biological detection?
A: Most agencies have great capability for
chemical or radiation testing in the field, but
are under-prepared for detecting biological
threats. Many mistakenly assume biological
identification can be performed like chemical
detection, where you obtain a signature and
compare it to a library of known signatures.
However, biological detection is much more
complex. First of all, we are surrounded by
biological materials and it is a challenge to
distinguish between intentional attacks and
what occurs naturally in the environment.
One approach is to use antibodies specific for
threat agents; these are the hand-held assays
[HHAs] that resemble pregnancy tests. HHAs
can be useful but lack sensitivity and the false
positive rate increases with added sensitivity.
PCR-based systems, such as Razor EX, detect
unique genetic material, DNA or RNA, specific
to threat organisms and are generally more
sensitive and reliable. Traditionally, PCR has
been relegated to labs since it requires trained
lab technicians measuring precise amounts
of refrigerated reagents and taking proper
precautions not to contaminate tests. We
considered theses limitations of PCR when
designing a field system for first responders.
Our field solution, Razor EX, uses a sealed
pouch system pre-loaded with freeze-dried
PCR reagents. Users do not need special training;
they simply load the sample into the
pouch and insert it into the instrument. O
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