Team:Northern BC/Description
Project Inspiration and Description
The Problem
As of April 2016, British Columbia has been in a state of emergency due to an increase in opioid-related drug overdoses1. At that time, synthetic opioids became the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States and Canada, with B.C. experiencing the most deaths over all other Canadian provinces2. Since 2016, more than 8 000 British Columbians have died as a result of opioid-related overdoses1. The relevance that this crisis has to our region is what drew our team to investigate this problem more closely. The most recent approach in Canadian society is to take a harm reduction approach to the opioid crisis3. One of these current harm reduction tactics is the use of fentanyl test strips so that people can test their drug samples prior to consumption for the presence of fentanyl and its analogues3. This testing is currently being made available in hopes that people will modify their behavior should their drugs be contaminated with fentanyl or analogues, ultimately reducing the number of overdoses4. This approach seemed promising; however we soon found that these test strips are far from optimal. They have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or Health Canada as they are unreliable, showing only 90% accuracy, with high amounts of false positives and negatives4. The strips also have difficulty detecting other opioids such as certain fentanyl analogues and they are not the most sensitive testing method5. Because of these inadequacies in the current testing methods we decided that an improved pre-consumption opioid testing system could be developed using synthetic biology.
Our Solution
We are working on an opioid biosensor using the yeast strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The sensor should be able to detect trace amounts of opioid present in a non-opioid drug sample, allowing recreational drug users to assess whether or not their non-opioid drugs are contaminated with opioids such as fentanyl or its analogues. The presence of an opioid molecule will activate the system, resulting in a visible colour change. We expect our sensor to have high sensitivity which is required for detecting very small quantities of opioids. Overall, we aim to create a user-friendly, highly sensitive, accurate, and inexpensive test for fentanyl and its analogues so people who choose to use drugs recreationally can do so more safely, reducing the number of opioid-related overdoses across the province and supporting the harm reduction strategy.
References
2. Overview of national data on opioid related harm and deaths. 2018. Government of Canada https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/substance-use/problematic-prescription-drug-use/opioids/data-surveillance-research/harms-deaths.html (accessed on March 23, 2019).
3. Government of Canada Actions on Opioids: 2016 and 2017. 2017. Government of Canada https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/healthy-living/actions-opioids-2016-2017.html (accessed on March 12, 2019).
4. Health Canada reminds Canadians of the limitations of fentanyl test strips being used to check street drugs before consumption. 2018. Government of Canada. http://www.healthycanadians .gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2018/67106a-eng.php (accessed Mar. 18th, 2019).
5. McGowan C.R., Harris M., Platt L., Hope V., and Rhodes, T. Fentanyl self-testing outside supervised injection settings to prevent opioid overdose: Do we know enough to promote it? International Journal of Drug Policy. 2018, 58, 31-36. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29758542 (accessed April 11th, 2019).
