Not all new products have to be more complicated than those that came before.
Consider NanoLogix, a budding biotech firm headquartered in Hubbard, which develops tests to rapidly detect microorganisms. With its BioNanoPore testing kit, the company has greatly reduced the time it takes to detect bacteria such as anthrax and E. coli.
While others in the field have gone high tech, using computers to pinpoint bacterial DNA, BioNanoPore operates in a petri dish. NanoLogix’s innovation is a super-thin transparent membrane nestled inside a petri dish that simply speeds up a process that’s been used for decades.
“We kinda scratched our heads about why no one had invented this before,” says CEO Bret Barnhizer, who has headed the publicly traded company since 2007.
Having built a better bacteria trap, Barnhizer envisions applications from battlefields to dairy farms, maternity wards and water treatment plants. This fall, the company moved its research and development lab to Hubbard, near Youngstown, putting all of its departments and its 14 employees under one roof for the first time as it takes aim at the
$50 billion-a-year diagnostic business.
Here’s how NanoLogix has cut the time it takes to identify bubonic plague from two days to one and tuberculosis from between three to 12 weeks to four days.
1. Inoculation: Samples — say saliva, milk or drinking water — are spread into a petri dish and onto the Bio-NanoPore membrane, which is coated in a gelatinous, nutrient-laden film, called ager.
2. Second helping: Bacteria are also fed from below as nutrients at the bottom of the dish soak up through the membrane, which is dotted with microscopic holes that allow liquids and nutrients to pass through, but not cells.
3. Incubation: After allowing the bacteria time to grow, usually between four and six hours, the membrane is peeled from the feeding dish with tweezers and transferred to a second dish lined with an ager-containing stain.
4. Staining: As the cells breathe, they absorb the stain, turning violet in a matter of minutes. In traditional methods, staining, which halts growth, takes place in the same dish, meaning longer waits before color can be added. “We’re not making anything grow faster; we’re just giving people the ability to see it faster,” Barnhizer says.
5. Identification: Often cells will be visible with the naked eye or with a basic microscope. While some bacteria can be identified right away because of unique morphology, some strains require further testing. This, Barnhizer says, is where computers come in handy. But NanoLogix is able to do what computers can’t: Determine quickly if bacteria are alive and a threat, or dead and harmless. “If the bacteria don’t grow,” he says, ”they’re not a problem.”