Team:British Columbia/Human Practices
Introduction
Our goal was to reach out to all possible experts and stakeholders relevant to the issue of marine biotoxins. We interacted with communities who are affected by this issue, and tried to deeply understand their thoughts, comments and suggestions to improve on our project. We continuously strive to integrate their input so that our project could evolve into a user-friendly onsite testing tool for biotoxins.
Interview: BC Centre for Disease Control
On June 4, 2019, our team had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Reza Afshari of BC Centre for Disease Control. Dr. Afshari publishes in monthly BCTOX journal with biotoxins featured in each issue. We discussed how, there has been a rising trend in saxitoxin levels, to the point where it is beyond the previous years’ averages.
He directed us to focus on considering the audience that our product will reach. Dr. Afshari mentions that our biotoxin testing tool would be most helpful to non-commercial self-harvesters, such as the indigeneous communities. Indeed, through our research, there had been several cases of Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning in Alaska in 2017, but often it goes unreported. His suggestions directed us to reach out to indigeneous communities, who we believe are a major stakeholder of our project.
Dr. Afshari also brought us to consider the functionality to our on-site test. Ideally, he said, the test would give us three answers: negative, positive but below threshold, and positive but above threshold.
Lastly, Dr. Afshari directed us to speak with the Canadin Food Inspection Agency in order to truly understand the testing process for biotoxins in Canada, and how this process ties with the industry and businesses.
Lab Visit: Canadian Food Inspection Agency
With Dr. Afshari’s advice, we decided to reach out to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. On June 13, we had the opportunity to discuss with Carolyn and Simon working at the CFIA laboratory in Vancouver (Burnaby), as well as tour the laboratory space. Carolyn and Simon expressed that the CFIA really appreciates our initiative, especially since they had recently created a contest seeking to develop devices for testing marine biotoxins found in Canadian waters.
We learned the general testing process, from processing the shellfish samples to operating the HPLC machine (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) to test the toxins. From our discussions, our team really wanted to learn how our project can help to improve the current marine biotoxins testing system. We learned that the entire testing process at CFIA cannot happen in one day. In fact, it may take up to 5 business days to complete. Further, prior to actual toxin testing, there are other tests that needs to be done, such as the suitability test. The many rounds of testing may slow down the efficiency. Some suggestions that they had given us is to aim for a less than 5% false negative rate. In our wet-lab and hardware, we will aim to integrate this when developing the physical on-site test. Further, CFIA expressed that there is opportunity to redesign program policy around risk management. A potential direction could be that an on-site test could first be used. Then, CFIA could only test the shellfish samples that shows positive for biotoxin back at the laboratory. This may save fees on transportation of the sample, as well as conducting the actual tests.
CFIA also provided us with information on Harmful Algal Blooms near Saanich Inlet.
We cross-referenced the samples collected by the Hallam lab and found a perfect match. We extracted the DNA from those samples (depth 10m, 120m, 135m, and 200m).
After our visit to CFIA, they published a chronicle on the team to help us look for sponsors and raise the attention on shellfish toxins. (more info on the public outreach page)
Interview: Fisheries and Oceans of Canada
We contacted Dr. Chris Pearce, a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans. Through him, we learned that since “global climate change is predicted to increase the occurrence and severity of toxic algal blooms”, the prevalence of toxic shellfish is also likely to increase. This gave us further confirmation that the issue of marine biotoxins that our team is trying to tackle is very much worth looking more into.
Dr. Chris Pearce also referred us to resources and literature on test kits for saxitoxins, highlighting that false negatives are a big issue with some kits.
Test-kit Testimonial: Beacon Analytical Systems
Beacon Analytical Systems is a biotechnology company that specializes in immunodiagnostic test kits for the areas of environmental and food safety since 1996. They produce Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) kits for lab-based Saxitoxin detection which can detect STX down to 0.2ppb.
From them, we learn:
- Saxitoxin plate kits have the most demand in the market
- They don’t have onsite testing kits for Saxitoxin
- Their strategies for reducing false positive and false negative are to run multiple replicates, especially during the collaboration of the collaborator of their test kit.
Interview: Indigenous shellfish company
Following Dr. Afshari’s suggestion on looking into indiginous communities, we contacted Coastal Shellfish, a First Nations owned aquaculture company operating on the west coast of Canada. We spoke to the vice president of Coastal Shellfish, Mr. Brian Kingzette, who has more than 30 years experience in the aquaculture field.
We learnt that indiginous people use shellfish for ceremonial and commercial purposes. The first nation shellfish farms have Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and provincial license for growing shellfish, and they also need to send in shellfish samples to CFIA biweekly during winter and weekly during summer for testing. However, the test results don’t come until four days after they send in samples. Even if they know the samples from four days ago are safe, they can’t be sure that the shellfish they are selling right now is good. They would love to have a quick test device for a peace of mind. In addition, they are trying to keep track of harmful algal blooms such that they may be able to predict the occurrence of toxin growth and be prepared ahead of time. From them, we also learnt that there was once a test kit called Jellett that they had used for rapid testing. It was easy and quick and low in false positive/negative, but CFIA banned that.
The advice we got from Brian:
- The device should be shelf stable, lasting at least for several months
- The device should give low rate of false negative.
- The shellfish extraction process should be easy as the potential users may not have lab experience
- The testing time should be quick, around 1 day is fair
- A semi-quantitative would be helpful, but a yes/no test is good enough
- The device would be useful not only in Canada, but also around the globe
Interview: Professor studying indigenous communities
We had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Dana Lepofsky. She has had the opportunity to work with various indigenous communities in the coast. From her, we learned that clams are a cultural keystone species to the aboriginals on the northwest coast. It gives them a sense of identity and community belonging. Dr. Lepofsky mentioned that First Nations communities have been using ancient ways of testing for shellfish toxins, such as rubbing the shellfish on the lips. She brings up the fact that several First Nations groups have been interested in having onsite testing devices. Dr. Lepofsky also mentions that it is important for the on-site testing device to give a quick result, as opposed to waiting several days to get testing results from a laboratory test. In response to this, we ensure that our testing device is able to give a response within 30 minutes using the cell-free system. Therefore, when we were selecting for outliers during our screening process, we favored the samples that could produce a response within a shorter amount of time over those that react near the end of the test.
Dr. Dana Lepofsky has also referred us to a member of the Gitga’at Nation who has experience working with the shellfish community there. We’ve updated the Gitga’at Nation that in the wetlab, we have a promising potential transcription factor for STX that we could use to make the on-site test. To move to the next stage of creating an on-site test for SXT, we are communicating with her to gather input on what characteristics would make a user-friendly sxt on-site testing tool for the indigenous community.