| Name | Michael |
|---|---|
| Last Name | Danquah |
| Home Address | 2611 Wendell Way Chattanooga, TN 37421 United States |
| Organization Name | University of Tennessee at Chattanooga |
| Describe Your Role In The Organization | I am the Associate Dean for the College of Engineering and Computer Science at UTC. I pay a leadership role in overseeing the academic affairs of the College in the areas of teaching, research, and service to the community. I am also a member of the Clinical Infectious Disease Control (CIDC) research group at UTC |
| Organization Address | 615 McCallie Ave Chattanooga, TN 37403 United States |
| Website | https://www.utc.edu/ |
| Best Phone Number To Reach You | 423-425-5459 |
| Alternate Phone Number | 423-425-2256 |
| Email Address | michael-danquah@utc.edu |
| Alternate Email Address | mkdanquah@gmail.com |
| Please Describe Your Project In Detail | The primary goal of this project is to support economic recovery in Chattanooga by partnering with local businesses to monitor contamination levels for COVID-19 and other pathogens (disease-causing bugs) in their facilities in real-time. This project utilizes cutting-edge technology that is being developed and studied by members of the Clinical Infectious Disease Control (CDIC) research group at UTC. This new technology consists of real-time pathogen monitoring technology (Chattanooga Biosensor or CHAB), which uses aptamers that bind to the pathogens for recognition. Aptamers are DNA or RNA molecules that can be designed to recognize specific targets, such as SARS-CoV-2, with high precision. Unlike traditional tests that take hours or days, the testing is in real-time and available using Bluetooth technology on smartphones. This project can reform pathogen monitoring methods in built environments allowing routine evaluation of pathogens in real time to inform effective decontamination programs in buildings and public spaces to promote human health. Initially, we will monitor pathogens in environments such as clinics for the homeless, schools, businesses, hospitals, shopping centers, churches, restaurants, offices, etc. using techniques that indicate the presence of living bacterial or viral pathogens on surfaces in the sites. These initial studies will take up to three days each to provide data on contamination back to site managers. Note that such monitoring is rarely if ever done today. As we conduct this pathogen monitoring in sites throughout Chattanooga, we will also work to produce new aptameric biosensors in our labs at UTC. Imagine using your smartphone to allow you to know if COVID-19 is present in a room before you enter it! The CHAB technology will have mobile integration (e.g., smartphones) to enable remote and easy access to the pathogen monitoring. In addition to the technological and economic benefits for businesses in Chattanooga, the intellectual investment in training students (future scientists and engineers), and community members, and providing them with knowledge and capability to combat pandemic pathogens will significantly bolster future pandemic preparedness efforts in Chattanooga, providing lasting responses that will spark generational change. The project will offer the following benefits: ● Monitor COVID-19 and other pathogens in the built environment (air, surfaces such as floors, etc.) for Chattanooga partners (to be determined). ● Provide support and resources to business and property owners as they adapt to new and alternative methods of infection control. ● Bolster pandemic preparedness efforts in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the nation, and globally. ● Decrease medical expenses, decrease insurance claims, and increase workplace productivity. ● Improve public health and safety in the workplace, household, and all indoor spaces ● Address systemic public health and economic challenges that have contributed to the unequal impact of the pandemic. ● Provide opportunities to create new industries in Chattanooga based on the new technology to boost innovation and economic development in Chattanooga. ● Offer intellectual investment through training of individuals and students (future engineers and scientists). Highly infectious diseases that cross local, regional, national, and international boundaries with global scale impacts, such as COVID-19, continue to be a threat to public health. In addition to COVID-19, there are other potential communicable pathogens such as Ebola and Zika virus, as well as bacterial pathogens like methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus [MRSA] that pose public health risks as they are highly transmissible and possess the capacity to spread quickly among humans and cause significant mortality. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the insufficient capacity, resources, and tools to combat widespread disease effectively in communities, nationally, and globally. A major step towards pandemic prevention and management is effective monitoring of infections and precise detection of the causative pathogen in real-time and in various environments to guide the needed measures of intervention required to break the chain of transmission. Presently, there is no available technology for real-time pathogen monitoring in built environments. Hence, the proposed technology (CHAB) that will be refined and tested in Chattanooga will meet this need. Overview: Over the past two years, society has had a wakeup call regarding communicable, infectious diseases. The global pandemic caused by the SARS Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has reminded us just how fragile our lives can be. As a result, the need to reduce COVID-19 transmission in the indoor environment has become a priority. However, the spread of communicable disease in the built environment is not limited to COVID-19. Indoor infections can be caused by viruses, bacteria, and fungi, and can be spread via the air we breathe or surfaces we touch. Critical to providing a reduction in transmission of diseases caused by different pathogens in the built environment is the need to learn much more about the types of pathogens typically found inside places where we live and work. Actions taken to help produce cleaner indoor environments should help make our built environments safer from future pandemics, producing a stronger, more equitable economy for all citizens. First attempts to reduce the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 from the built environment seemed haphazard, with different instructions coming from different sources. Given that humans in the developed world spend 90% of their lives in enclosed buildings, we need to learn more about microorganisms (including SARS-CoV-2) found in the built environment. Buildings are complex ecosystems that house trillions of diverse microorganisms interacting with each other, with humans, and with their environment. Many problems still exist. Amongst others, the following fundamental questions persist when it comes to contamination indoors. ● How can we tell if an indoor space is contaminated with pathogens or not before visiting the place? ● Is there a way to monitor an indoor space for pathogenic contamination in real-time and remotely? Answering these questions is the main driver of the proposed project. Indoor environments are routinely cleaned and disinfected for the purpose of killing pathogens. However, there is no real-time monitoring technology to know how effective the cleaning and disinfection measures have been, or when the environment becomes contaminated again. Also, existing protocols for cleaning and disinfecting critical areas of the built environment are lacking, mainly due to little or no monitoring of their efficacies. In recent years when communicable pathogens have been monitored in intensive care units of hospitals, pathogens including MRSA and Clostridium difficile have been found on surfaces adjacent to patients. The existing cleaning procedures in those hospitals were not effective at removing these potentially deadly pathogens, and no one would have known about the presence of these pathogens if the monitoring study had not been done. How many other pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, have been missed by routine cleaning measures? These types of contaminations need to be a thing of the past if we want to ensure the safest indoor spaces, particularly for the most vulnerable patients in our hospitals. Hospitals are not the only facilities that pose risks to people due to the presence of potentially pathogenic microorganisms. Many clinics, shelters, schools, restaurants, offices, homes, shopping centers, etc., can also be compromised by pathogen contamination. Clinics serving the homeless are known to pose a problem for the spread of communicable diseases. Data comparing two hospitals, two free health clinics, and a federally qualified community health center demonstrated significantly higher levels of communicable pathogens in the facilities used by the homeless population, compared with the clinics used by patients using general clinics charging fees. Little to no data currently exists detailing the presence or abundance of pathogens within homeless shelters, homeless clinics, and many other similar facilities. Through this project, the CIDC will provide this needed data by using viable pathogen surveys and later using the CHAB biosensor technology for real-time monitoring of pathogens, helping avoid the continued spread of pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, particularly among people of low socioeconomic populations in Chattanooga. Reduction of the spread of pathogens within the built environment will also require the development of new ways of thinking about the built environment. New questions that must be addressed include but are not limited to the following: What method of transmission (e.g., ventilation versus human occupancy, the importance of surface contact) significantly influence the built environment microbiome? What attributes of the built environment (e.g., building materials, light exposure, air source and path) affect the nature and quantity of pathogens indoors? To consider questions like these, the CIDC will utilize experience gained through many studies focused on contamination of the built environment to engage with industry partners, conducting original research, and training a new generation of innovators and practitioners. Our goal is to use this knowledge to initiate new processes/procedures to optimize the design and operation of buildings and public spaces to promote human health. We also seek to develop new types of biosensors that will greatly speed up the process of detecting key, viable pathogens in the built environment. The CIDC includes colleagues in UTC’s College of Engineering who specialize in the development of aptameric detectors for specific microorganisms. One outcome of this project will be to produce a variety of biosensors that will first be specific for the SARS-CoV-2, and later be specific for different species of pathogenic bacteria (e.g., MRSA) and other pathogens. We will provide field testing of these biosensors to verify their effectiveness at the sites we study throughout Chattanooga. CIDC Proposed Studies: Proposed studies to be conducted by the CIDC using American Rescue Plan funds will start with identification of local homeless clinics and community centers throughout Hamilton County interested in participating in our study. We will then offer to perform monitoring scans of their facilities for the SARS-CoV-2 and for potentially pathogenic bacteria. Working with the management of these facilities, we will offer to provide them with data that could be used to help their environmental cleaning staff to better target their cleaning, disinfecting, and fumigating activities. Once new cleaning and disinfecting procedures have been enacted, the CIDC will return to the facilities to run follow up monitoring scans to determine how effective the new targeted cleaning and disinfection procedures have been, helping to improve the efficiency of the system to reduce pathogen presence in these facilities. Next, the CIDC will open up our monitoring procedures to many other types of facilities that will span as much of the range of the built environment in Chattanooga and Hamilton County as possible. We will contact day care centers, retailers, the CARTA transportation system, and others, offering to provide them with data on the presence (or absence) of pathogens in their facilities (or on buses). While we are working with these local indoor facilities to provide data on the presence of pathogens, we will also be working in the lab with our engineering colleagues to help with the development of aptamer-based biosensors. The first target for these biosensors, which will provide almost instantaneous data on the presence or absence of the pathogen, will be the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Ultimately, it is the intention of the CIDC to produce biosensors that will enable the rapid detection of other viral pathogens (e.g., critical strains of the flu virus), as well as many of the bacterial pathogen we now find in many places within the local built environment. Real-time monitoring of infectious agents in built environments: As part of the vision to reform pathogen monitoring in built environments in Chattanooga and other communities, we will create novel biosensors (CHAB), using highly specific bio-probes (called aptamers) that will be developed to detect various pathogens, offering real-time monitoring. The aptamers will be developed to be highly specific to the pathogen (SARS-CoV-2, MRSA etc.). We will leverage our significant expertise in developing aptamers to create superior bio-probes for the pathogen. The application of aptamers in the development of biomedical product technologies is of significant interest, becoming the core technology for a number of start-up companies. Recently, an aptamer-based bandage has been developed to monitor wound healing. Also, aptamer-based cancer diagnostics tools have been developed. Huge opportunities exist to develop aptamer-based pathogen detection products for real-time monitoring. With our existing expertise in aptamer development, more emphasis will go into product development and testing of the technology. Key innovation for the CHAB technology will be a wireless biosensor with mobile integration (e.g., smartphone) for high-precision real-time monitoring and data transfer. This data-enabled biosensing technology can be used in various locations to monitor the presence of pathogens in different environments and the data can be transferred wirelessly and instantaneously to relevant individuals and/or shared with the community. This will assist communities to trace, identify, and communicate contaminated sites to the public very quickly. It will also help in identifying highly contaminated areas within a given environment. The technology can be developed for air, water, and food-borne pathogens as well. The wireless technology can also be adapted to offer a novel approach for out-patient monitoring in telehealth applications, which will help lessen the burden on hospitals and other public health sites during pandemics. The technology will significantly reform pathogen monitoring during pandemics by offering the following performance characteristics: ● A highly precise method for pathogen detection outside the laboratory environment ● Inexpensive devices for routine monitoring and everyday use ● Portable devices for real-time pathogen detection in built environments ● A device that can be installed in indoor spaces for continuous monitoring of pathogens ● A device that can be miniaturized into pocket-size and be used by individuals (including laypeople) and industries for direct detection of pathogens from samples such as saliva, blood, surface swabs, sewage, food, water, aerosols, air, etc. ● Integration into mobile devices (e.g., smartphone) with a wireless data transfer mechanism for easy communication and sharing of monitoring data. The technology and its features represent revolutionary advancements over current pathogen detection methods and will put Chattanooga at the forefront of developing and benefiting socioeconomically from this innovation. Overall, in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the continued drag on our economy that pathogens in the built environment cause, the CIDC will continue to work to provide new options to help reopen facilities throughout the Chattanooga area and beyond in a safe manner. Through this project, we hope to provide creative options to reduce pathogen transmission risks. To keep the improvements gained due to CIDC work, we will develop ongoing systems to provide surveillance monitoring of pathogens in the built environment. |
| Please explain how your project meets the requirements of the American Rescue Plan | This proposed project has been designed to meet the requirements of the American Rescue Plan focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide for continued development of remediation measures to help reduce the impact of any future pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that communicable diseases like COVID-19 can be spread more easily indoors, inside the built environment. By not knowing if indoor environments had been contaminated by the COVID-19 virus, no one is certain whether stronger measures to disinfect or filter the air were necessary. This problem is not unique to the COVID-19 virus; it occurs with many other types of pathogens, including bacteria and fungi. The CIDC project would provide monitoring capabilities for many different types of communicable pathogens that could be applied to public spaces. Currently, monitoring for the presence of pathogens in the built environment is not routinely done anywhere, and the few studies conducted to date have found living pathogenic MRSA bacteria throughout the environment of healthcare facilities. We propose to run scans of environmental contamination, initially targeting common communicable pathogens (e.g., SARS-CoV-2 virus, MRSA, and others) in public places where many people congregate. A list of potential sites for our studies include homeless shelters, homeless clinics, community centers, other healthcare facilities, nursing homes, day cares, prisons (and jails), local businesses, and possibly even CARTA busses. The CIDC will gain appropriate permission to use any sites that will be used on this project. Eventually, we would like to open our services up to local businesses and schools. The CIDC will help managers in the facilities studied to come up with remediation plans to target the pathogens we detect. At the same time the CIDC will be working in the lab to develop new pathogen detecting sensors that use aptameric technology that will respond specifically to different pathogens. Our ultimate plan is to produce and deploy new technology that will help reduce the threats of many different pathogens, supporting prevention mitigation into the future. |
| Where would your project take place? | The majority of this project will take place in Chattanooga, also including some sites in unincorporated Hamilton County. The CIDC will gain permission to use any sites to be used on this project. The sites we will target for our monitoring studies will start with: homeless shelters, homeless clinics, community centers, other healthcare facilities, nursing homes, day cares, and selected local businesses. Eventually, we would like to open our services up to any local businesses, schools, and any willing partners. Work on the CHAB aptameric biosensor will take place in CIDC laboratories on the UTC campus (in the Biology, Geology, and Environmental Science department) where cultures for the aptamers will be produced. These cultures will be used in UTC’s College of Engineering for the biosensor development. Demonstrations of the aptameric biosensor technology will be run in as many of the target sites as we can gain permission to use. |
| How much will your project cost in total? | 2700000 |
| Do you have any matching funding sources from other local governments, private entities, non-profits, or philanthropic entities for your project? | No |
| Please describe the source and list amounts of any other funding. | |
| What portion of the project are you asking the city to fund? | |
| If funded, when would your project start? | March 1, 2022 |
| How long would your project take to complete? | 24 months |
| What milestones would you use to measure your project’s progress? | Critical milestones in this project will include (1) development of a thorough list of sites (community partners) for which we have permission to work with and study, (2) provision (to site management) of the first round of results on pathogen presence using traditional lab procedures to detect selected pathogens in the sites studied, (3) assistance to site managers on potential remediation procedures to use, (4) reassessment of the sites after remedial measures have been enacted, (5) plans for future monitoring of initial study sites, (6) laboratory development of aptamers first for the SARS CoVid-2 virus, and later for other virus targets (e.g., flu) and bacterial targets (e.g., MRSA), (7) production of prototype biosensors incorporating the aptamers developed, (8) testing of the prototype biosensors in study sites, and (9) preparation of reports on the progress the CIDC makes as we accomplish these tasks. |
| How would you ensure accountability and transparency throughout the project lifecycle? | This project will be managed by Drs. Danquah, Levine, and Spratt throughout the entire lifecycle. As managers of the project, we will be in constant contact with our community partners, students and postdoctoral associates working in our labs and at the facilities under study. In addition, we envision providing transparent data and updates to the Mayor’s Office. We will prepare periodic reports to describe our progress meeting the milestones indicated above, and we plan to host lab and site visits for members of the City Equitable Recovery Commission. We will also seek to both present and publish the findings of our studies in scientific meetings and journals. CIDC will provide demonstrations of our new aptameric biosensors to members of the City Equitable Recovery Commission, and to any other interested parties. |
| If successful, how would your project benefit the community? | This proposal has both immediate and long-standing benefits to the City of Chattanooga and the community. Immediate benefits include supporting economic recovery through multiple partnerships with existing local businesses to assess the presence (or absence) of communicable pathogens in their facilities, and to assist in testing and validation of the new aptameric technology for real-time monitoring of pathogens. Any local companies with an interest could be test sites for the technology and partnerships, spanning the public and private sectors. Long-term benefits are numerous and include the creation of new jobs and potential creation of a large-scale, local biotechnology company that could mass produce the CHAB aptameric biosensor technology. This can put Chattanooga on the map globally for real-time monitoring of pathogens that could be used in virtually any setting. As previously discussed, this technology allows public/private organizations and individuals to monitor their environments for pathogen presence in a rapid and cost-effective way, allowing for remediation of any potential contamination before it escalates to infections in people using their facilities. Examples include testing the air or floors in a home, school, nursing home, or prison for particular pathogens such as COVID-19 or testing food for pathogens to prevent food-borne illness; in reality the possibilities are endless. By improving public health and safety with easy monitoring, we can mitigate the effects of pathogens (such as COVID-19 and bacteria like MRSA) in the built environment lessening the effects of future pandemics (annual flu season, COVID variants, etc.). This ultimately will decrease medical expenses, decrease insurance claims, and increase workplace productivity. |
| How will you attract community buy-in for your project? | We will engage the community, local businesses, daycares, shopping centers, industries, etc. in discussions and work together to develop the technology. We visit these facilities to perform pathogen monitoring exercises and share the data with them. Imagine the City of Chattanooga being a world leader in real-time identification of pathogens. In this scenario, businesses and citizens could use this technology with their smartphones and in real-time detect if there is a problem. As an example, imagine knowing what the air quality is in a room before entering it by checking an application on your smartphone. Monitoring water quality or the cleanliness of a day-care facility or an Amazon fulfillment center could be performed in minutes allowing for cleaning and prevention of illness and spread. Community buy-in would be enhanced by helping those communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Those living in crowded housing and long-term care facilities are more affected during pandemics, and those with a lower household income are more likely to have underlying health conditions and have a greater risk of serious illness if they are infected with COVID-19. We have the potential to rewrite Chattanooga’s history of environmental contamination and become the cleanest city in America! |
| Name | David Levine |
| Contact Information | David-Levine@utc.edu |
| Name | Henry Spratt |
| Contact Information | Henry-Spratt@utc.edu |
| Is there anything else you would like us to know about your project? | The project represents an integral part of the needed activities to expedite Covid-related economic recovery in Chattanooga for various businesses. As part of the ongoing work by CIDC, we have partnered with various businesses in Chattanooga to provide pathogen monitoring services. The proposed project will help to expand the scale of work and offer real-time monitoring to generate significant positive outcomes on the Chattanooga economy. |