{"id":162498,"date":"2014-12-27T15:08:59","date_gmt":"2014-12-27T17:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=162498"},"modified":"2015-01-27T15:25:26","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T17:25:26","slug":"multiplying-targets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/multiplying-targets\/","title":{"rendered":"Multiplying targets"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Neoprospecta\u2019s

NEOPROSPECTA<\/span>Neoprospecta\u2019s Laboratory: sequencing of microorganisms and identification…NEOPROSPECTA<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), 14% of hospitalized patients worldwide suffer from hospital infections. In Brazil alone, according to the National Biosafety Association (ANBio), 100,000 people die each year from infections contracted in hospitals and clinics while seeking treatment there for other diseases. One of the difficulties in controlling these infections is the delay in identifying the microorganisms found in hospitals. This problem led two doctoral students of genetics and molecular biology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) to develop a technology that can analyze up to 512 samples and identify, in each of them, tens of thousands of species of microorganisms, within three to five days, on average. This is comparable to the amount of time it takes to detect just one bacterium by the traditional method. The two doctoral students, Marcos de Oliveira Carvalho, a pharmacist, and Luiz Felipe Valter de Oliveira, a biologist, started Neoprospecta, a small business located in Sapiens Park in the city of Florian\u00f3polis, Santa Catarina State.<\/p>\n

The old technique of identifying bacteria, still the one most often employed, uses Petri dishes, in which species are cultivated and identified one by one. The problem is that each bacterium can take up to one week to be cultivated. The Neoprospecta technology associates DNA analysis with an algorithm\u2014mathematical instructions for computer software\u2014which automates the entire process. \u201cIt’s a platform that involves several stages, technologies and systems,\u201d says Carvalho, the company\u2019s CEO. The whole process is done in four stages: collection of material at various points throughout the hospital\u2014or other institutions and companies such as clinics, health centers, food factories and water treatment plants\u2014genome sequencing, data analysis and presentation of the results.<\/p>\n

The collection is done at potential points of infection, including hands, coats and instruments used by professionals of the institution (doctors, nurses, assistants), invasive devices, rooms, hallways, drinking fountains, doors, doorknobs, beds, and even the patients themselves. \u201cTo obtain each sample, we use cotton swabs measuring up to 15 centimeters in size,\u201d <\/em>says Carvalho. \u201cEach swab has a capsule on the end with a liquid known as lysis solution and a plastic valve, through which this solution comes into contact with the collected material.\u201d This solution is made \u200b\u200bof a mixture of water, soap and sodium chloride, commonly known as table salt, and is used to break the cell membrane. \u201cAnd so the swab itself starts to break the cells of the bacteria, which provides more security in transporting the material, and begins the process of DNA purification,\u201d says Carvalho. \u201cHundreds of swabs are used in the analysis of a hospital. After collection, they are placed in special containers that we designed, which are then taken to our laboratory where the DNA of the microorganisms is purified. At this point, the genetic material of all the species present in the samples is mixed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"...

NEOPROSPECTA<\/span><\/a> … of the species and amount of bacteria related to the sample siteNEOPROSPECTA<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The next stage is the sequencing. But before doing that, this \u201csoup\u201d of the purified DNA of hundreds or thousands of species of bacteria must be prepared. \u201cOur company developed and perfected this preparation technique, which allows us to increase the multiplexing of samples without sacrificing quality,\u201d says Carvalho. \u201cWith it, we can analyze multiple samples in parallel, resulting in faster turnaround and lower costs.\u201d He notes that the price for cultivating each bacterium is around R$100.00. Each swab costs around R$150.00, but it can identify hundreds or even thousands of species, which reduces to pennies the amount spent to identify each bacterium. In the analysis of the sequencing data\u2014potentially tens of gigabytes of data\u2014the DNA, which is still all mixed up, is separated by species. Thus, it will be possible to identify which species are in the sample and the amount of bacteria. \u201cAt this stage, the data are subjected to other algorithms, which classify each species and catalog them,\u201d says Carvalho. \u201cAll processing is done on Neoprospecta\u2019s servers, on which data are encoded and processed under a high security regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

To identify each species of microorganism, the algorithm compares the DNA of the bacteria sequenced in the sample with the billions that make up the company\u2019s database. Despite the large number of cataloged bacteria, up to 50% of those identified from a hospital setting are not found in the database, and many of them are unknown to science. When this occurs, the new bacteria are labeled and become part of the database. The task of classifying them can be done by other researchers in the area of taxonomy, for example.<\/p>\n

Accelerated investment
\n<\/strong>The last phase is presentation of the results. \u201cTo do this the data are loaded into a system we developed for microbial risk analysis and quality control of a hospital environment,\u201d says Carvalho. \u201cThis system presents a view of the microbiological load in the collected samples.\u201d Neoprospecta currently has three hospitals as clients, two in S\u00e3o Paulo and one in Porto Alegre, the capital city of Rio Grande do Sul State; he cannot reveal their names.<\/p>\n

It may not be much, but it is significant for a small business with just a little more than a year of operation. The story of Neoprospecta began in 2010, when Carvalho and Valter de Oliveira won the Santander Prize for Entrepreneurship with the company’s business model. The following year they won the Ibero-American Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, awarded by the Secretar\u00eda General Iberoamericana (SEGIB), based in Madrid. At that time, Neoprospecta was developing slowly because the two partners were working on their doctorates at UFRGS. At the end of 2012, they found some investors. In 2013, an angel investor invested R$500,000 in the company, and it moved from Porto Alegre to Sapiens Park in Florian\u00f3polis, where it was able to accelerate the process of developing its proprietary technology. More recently Neoprospecta received a R$4 million injection of funds from the Cventures Primus fund. \u201cThe money is being used for infrastructure, marketing and research and development,\u201d says Carvalho. \u201cIn addition, funds were also used for the construction of five laboratories and the purchase of equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Company develops system for more rapid identification of bacteria","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[169],"tags":[209,242,243],"coauthors":[112],"class_list":["post-162498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-biology","tag-immunology","tag-innovation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162498"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=162498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}