Ian Lipkin Develops Test to Find All Known Viruses - At Once

Cort

Founder of Health Rising and Phoenix Rising
Staff member
"VirCapSeq-VERT is a specific, sensitive, powerful way of characterizing all of the viruses in a sample. This will be an important tool for precision medicine as well as basic and clinical research." Ian Lipkin

Ian Lipkin and his colleagues a the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) have created a way for doctors to test for viruses - ALL viruses - at once in the blood. Not only is the test comprehensive - it's been described as fast, precise and cheap. The procedure goes by the tongue twisting name of the "Virome-Capture-Sequencing platform for Vertebrate viruses (VirCapSeq-VERT)" and Lipkin reports that it's better than PCR - the gold standard for viral testing.

MBio. 2015 Sep 22;6(5). pii: e01491-15. doi: 10.1128/mBio.01491-15. Virome Capture Sequencing Enables Sensitive Viral Diagnosis and Comprehensive Virome Analysis. Briese T1, Kapoor A2, Mishra N3, Jain K3, Kumar A3, Jabado OJ3, Lipkin WI4.

[fright]
_bacteria-and-virus-car.jpg
[/fright]The CII used something called high-throughput sequencing to create a probe that contained pieces of 2,000,000 viruses. Because the probe contains the full genome of each virus it's extremely precise. Putting the probe through its paces in blood, saliva, feces, etc. revealed that it was more precise than PCR and was able to pick up variants PCR missed. The test is even able to pick up evidence of novel viruses.

It's unequivocal. It also allows you to find mutations that would circumvent traditional diagnostics, or that might would affect resistance to drugs or vaccines.” Ian Lipkin

An Atlantic Monthly piece describes a transplant patient who fell mysteriously ill. It turned out that standard viral tests would have been useless - the VirCapSeq-VERT test revealed that dengue virus - a unsuspected virus - had become reactivated.

Lipkin said “It wasn't what we anticipated, but we didn't have to make a priori decisions about what we planned to find. When people analyze samples from people who are ill, they have some idea in mind. This is probably an enterovirus, or maybe it's a herpesvirues. They then do a specific assay for that particular agent. They don't usually have the capacity to look broadly.”

Doctors currently rely on their best guess to determine which expensive PCR tests to run. The CII's test should cheaply and effectively uncover any virus present in a blood samples. The cost savings and the benefit to the patient could be high. No longer will they have to rely on doctor's best guesses to determine if they have a viral infection. While the test can pick up every virus known to infect vertebrates it doesn't appear that it will used that way in doctor's offices. The piece released by Columbia states that the VirCapSeq-VERT test for 20 viruses costs $40.

It's not clear what the implications of this new test are for chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalga. Except for what Lipkin believes to be a meaningless retrovirus, Lipkin's earlier pathogen study found no evidence of significant pathogen involvement in the plasma of ME/CFS patients.

There's still much we don't know, though. The CII's use of plasma in its big ME/CFS pathogen study was controversial and the lab is redoing the herpesvirus tests using white blood cells. The Simmaron Research Foundation is funding the first study to comprehensively assess the incidence of mosquito and tick-borne viruses and bacteria in ME/CFS. Plus, as noted above, this new test can pick up variants of viruses that PCR tests cannot.

If it's run in the blood, though, it may not pick up the kind of persistent infections some believe are present in ME/CFS and FM - but not circulating there. When the test becomes available in doctor's offices it will provide an easy way for ME/CFS and FM patients to get screened for acute infections.

Ian Lipkin has a long history of developing new techniques for pathogen discovery. He developed subtractive cloning, mass-tag PCR, pan-microbial microarray and now this. His team has discovered over 700 new viruses. Lipkin recently found a hepatitis-like virus in the blood supply- the first time that has happened in years. (The virus is not believed to be dangerous).
 
Last edited:

Hello!

Well-Known Member
The Columbia folks say this test will cost about $40 to check for 20 viruses,
http://cii.columbia.edu/blog.aspx?cid=QexRXs
They do say it will work on blood, stool and nasal swab samples, whereas the VirScan people have only mentioned it working on blood samples. Dr. Montoya seems enthusiastic about it.

The VirScan uses a different method and will test for all 206 viruses for about $25, https://www.hhmi.org/news/your-viral-infection-history-single-drop-blood
I believe Dr. Ron Davis is using this in his severely ill study.

Both tests are currently available only for research purposes.

It's a whole new world!
 

waiting

Member
Does anyone have an idea how long it typically takes for a test like this, used in research only, to become widely available?
 

Cort

Founder of Health Rising and Phoenix Rising
Staff member
W
The Columbia folks say this test will cost about $40 to check for 20 viruses,
http://cii.columbia.edu/blog.aspx?cid=QexRXs
They do say it will work on blood, stool and nasal swab samples, whereas the VirScan people have only mentioned it working on blood samples. Dr. Montoya seems enthusiastic about it.

The VirScan uses a different method and will test for all 206 viruses for about $25, https://www.hhmi.org/news/your-viral-infection-history-single-drop-blood
I believe Dr. Ron Davis is using this in his severely ill study.

Both tests are currently available only for research purposes.

It's a whole new world!
Wow - 206 viruses for $25 - that's incredible. It is a whole new world!
 

Cort

Founder of Health Rising and Phoenix Rising
Staff member
Does anyone have an idea how long it typically takes for a test like this, used in research only, to become widely available?
I would be surprised if it takes long actually. The profit motive looms large. The developers will want to get it out to the public as quickly as possible and labs will want to feature the newest things.

In the article it said the CFI was beginning negotiations with labs.
 

Get Our Free ME/CFS and FM Blog!



Forum Tips

Support Our Work

DO IT MONTHLY

HEALTH RISING IS NOT A 501 (c) 3 NON-PROFIT

Shopping on Amazon.com For HR

Latest Resources

Top