In late December, Dr. Alyson Kelvin was relaxing with her family during the holiday season when she briefly went to check her email – and was startled.
The Assistant Professor with the Division of Infectious Diseases at Dalhousie University had received an alert from a social network of infectious disease researchers that referred to an undiagnosed pneumonia in Wuhan, China. The message also called on hospitals to prepare for this new disease and to triage and separate any patients with these symptoms when they arrive, said Dr. Kelvin, a virologist at Dalhousie University and the IWK Health Centre in Halifax.
Long before COVID-19 reached pandemic status, she set her sights on getting hold of the novel coronavirus to start working on a vaccine. She sent the email to her father – Dr. David Kelvin, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Dal Med’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology.
“Basically, my interpretation was you don’t want this spreading in your hospital,” said Dr. Kelvin, pictured below. “I felt the email was quite alarming. I sent it to my father and said, we need to get this virus and start working on it.”
Dr. Alyson Kelvin, Assistant Professor with the Division of Infectious Diseases at Dalhousie University, says her research is helping to determine whether a COVID-19 vaccine is effective and safe enough to progress to clinical trials.
By late February, Dr. Kelvin was headed to the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization’s International Vaccine Centre in Saskatchewan. Dalhousie’s labs do not have the required containment facilities to handle the virus that VIDO-Intervac, based at the University of Saskatoon, has on site. Since then she has been collaborating with researchers at VIDO-Intervac — which Dr. Kelvin says were the first in Canada to successfully grow the virus — and working on research that includes developing a model for other researchers to evaluate their own potential COVID-19 vaccines. Her team is also doing pre-clinical work that would determine whether a vaccine was effective and safe enough to progress to clinical trials – a key hurdle.
The Dalhousie professor’s work is one of several COVID-19 focused university projects that has received a donation from Scotiabank, a portion of the $2.5 million earmarked for community response efforts related to COVID-19 across the Bank’s global footprint. The aim of these donations, the Bank said in April, is to support those populations and communities most at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.
From the overall donation amount, $150,000 has been directed to select academic partners working on rapidly scalable COVID-19 healthcare innovations – including $25,000 to Dr. Kelvin’s team of Dalhousie researchers and $25,000 towards an initiative at the University of Calgary to develop a globally scalable test for the rapid detection of COVID-19.
Although global efforts to slow the spread of the virus have made progress, allowing for some economies to begin re-opening with restrictions, two of the most crucial needs for controlling the pandemic are a safe, affordable, and widely-available vaccine and rapid, widespread testing.
Dr. Ian Lewis, assistant professor at the University of Calgary’s Department of Biological Sciences, heads up a lab that is working on a rapid diagnostic test for SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. The test will use mass spectrometry – a technique used to identify the chemical makeup of a substance – to detect the virus proteins directly from swabs.
His lab, which is part of the Alberta Precision Exchange, specializes in these types of rapid tests and has already developed one for bloodstream and urinary tract infections.
Two months ago, his research lab began actively working to apply the same mass-spectrometry technology and approach to detecting COVID-19, he said. Currently, he said, there is no high-volume rapid test that has been approved for use in Canada.
“That’s the unmet need that we’re thinking this technology could help fill,” said Dr. Lewis, pictured below.
Dr. Ian Lewis, assistant professor at the University of Calgary’s Department of Biological Sciences, says that widescale community testing is key, and an ongoing need, until there is an effective COVID-19 vaccine. Photo by Troy Feener.
Their rapid test, if successful, could do between 750 to 1,000 tests using one instrument, he said.
To put this in context, Canada’s chief public health officer Theresa Tam said last week that an average of 33,000 people were tested daily across the country during the week prior.
Another benefit of Dr. Lewis’ technology is that it does not require the use of reagents that are used in other diagnostic tests and are now running low, he says.
“Most diagnostic testing that is happening in Canada is using nucleic acid-based tests, and that has resulted in some serious supply chain issues here in Alberta,” Dr. Lewis said.
His technology can respond to large increases in diagnostic testing without placing a burden on these supply chains, he added.
“We anticipate that the need for testing will go up a lot, because we will need to guard against a second wave of COVID infections,” Dr. Lewis said. “So widescale community testing is something that we perceive as a really important need that will be ongoing, up until there is an effective COVID-19 vaccine.”
Meanwhile, Dalhousie’s Dr. Kelvin and her team, in collaboration with VIDO-InterVac, continue to diligently work on developing and testing new vaccines, including one DNA-based vaccine that has the ability to be scaled up quickly.
“If we can show that this vaccine is protective and safe, then it could be brought out to people in a matter of weeks,” she said.
She is hopeful that her work is meaningfully helping the Canadian, and global, endeavour among scientists to develop and find a vaccine, and allow the economy and people return to a level of normality.
“This is our scientists’ next grand challenge, and almost our responsibility, to contribute to helping in resource-limited areas and getting vaccines to them,” Dr. Kelvin said. “Because that's what's really going to stop the pandemic, if there's equal opportunity for everyone to vaccines. And these vaccines that are quicker and possibly cheaper to scale up might have a great impact globally.”