- BioFire Defense developed test panels that can detect five different strains of Ebola, plus other diseases.
- The test panels are available in the U.S. and shipped to clinics across Africa and Asia.
- Healthcare providers take a blood sample from a patient's arm, then get results for 16 different tests in less than an hour.
You might not think Utah has much connection to the Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda right now. But BioFire Defense in Murray, Utah — a division of a larger diagnostic company — has been working to detect Ebola strains for the past decade.
Back in 2014 when the Zaire strain of Ebola was rampant, “there became a need for more directed diagnostics towards tropical diseases” like malaria, dengue and Ebola, according to Matt Scullion, vice president of business development at BioFire Defense.
In 2015, the company started working with the U.S. military to create a test panel that could detect these deadly diseases.
“The U.S. military wanted a diagnostic tool that was in their toolbox to identify the diseases and then potentially treat them,” Scullion said. The U.S. was worried about military personnel being exposed to diseases like Ebola while deployed and then bringing them into the country.
After eight years of development, Scullion said the product was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2023, then the company began marketing and distributing the panels to hospitals and setting up “clinical evaluation sites across the globe.” Scullion said these sites are in Africa, Southeast Asia and Central America.
Finding the root of the problem
Tropical diseases all present similar symptoms at first, so it’s hard to tell what disease you’re dealing with, according to Scullion.
“A patient will come in with a very high fever, but nothing else that differentiates Ebola from malaria,” he said. “Fundamentally, you want to make sure that you don’t stick a malaria patient in with all the Ebola patients, because if they didn’t have Ebola before, they’ll have Ebola after they’ve been exposed to other patients for a period of time.”
The panel tests from BioFire Defense help healthcare providers know which patients have what disease and where to send them and how to treat them, hopefully slowing the spread.
“That’s the advantage of our panel. We can test for more than just Ebola, and be able to diagnose these people with very high fevers and differentiate between the different diseases,” he said.
“It can test for the four different known strains of Ebola that infect humans and one that could infect humans." Scullion said this includes Bundibugyo, the strain causing the current outbreaks in Africa.
Scullion said the demand for the panel tests is high right now because of conditions in Congo and Uganda. “We have the manufacturing capability, and we’re ramping up our manufacturing of these tests to meet the critical need right now.”
How it works
The testing begins by taking a blood sample from the patient’s arm. With that sample, the technician performs a series of steps and then processes it.
“In less than an hour, it comes back with the results” for 16 different tests from that one patient sample, Scullion said.
“The difficult part about the Bundibugyo outbreak is there are no vaccines or therapeutics” specifically for it, he said. That’s why the diagnostic test is so important. “You can isolate potential patients, trace their contacts and then treat everything appropriately.”
Per Scullion, “It’s a very opportune time for us to actually employ these tests and use them, and do some good in these areas, as well as prepare the U.S. for anything that might come in. So, for us, it’s a source of pride to be able to support these things quickly, and being able to react to them, because it’s what we’ve been preparing for for a long time.”
Ebola case count
As of June 10, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 676 confirmed cases of Ebola and 136 confirmed deaths in Congo.
They also reported 19 confirmed cases and two confirmed deaths in Uganda, as well as one probable case and one probable death as of June 11.
The CDC’s website says there are “no Ebola cases associated with this outbreak" in the United States to date, “and the risk to the general public remains low.”
