Thread by @NathanGrubaugh

The #covid19 epidemic is obviously terrible, and I feel for all of the families that are effected. The honest truth is that it could be my family too.

Emergencies also can bring out the best in people, and I want to make sure that they get recognition. A short personal thread.

last weekend, I was informed that our hospital's diagnostic lab could not test patients for the coronavirus because they did not have the proper RNA controls to validate their assay. So we took to the twitters to find RNA.

https://twitter.com/NathanGrubaugh/status/1233752184371675136

The heroes turned out to be our friends at the @UTMB_WRCEVA. After a quick emergency use agreement, they sent us RNA to design assay standards and test PCR protocols.

https://twitter.com/NathanGrubaugh/status/1233776884065931267

@JosephFauver and I worked late organizing the popular PCR primers/proves and designing primers to make RNA standards for all of the sets. Had them ordered the next morning.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

Then @VogelsChantal created a protocol to quickly generate the standards for the kits.

docs.google.com/document/d/1eN…

We also formed a working group among other labs at Yale to determine how to best support our hospital.

@EllenFoxman @VirusesImmunity @SaadOmer3 Albert Ko & Marie Landry

https://twitter.com/VirusesImmunity/status/1234519966768128004

To sequence the coronavirus RNA when it came in, @Scalene quickly sent us the Artic primers.

https://twitter.com/NetworkArtic/status/1233414183326224384

We finally received the RNA yesterday (3/6), and @VogelsChantal worked in the lab until about midnight to generate our first RNA standard for the CDC N1 and N2 primer/probe sets.

Turns out that our diagnostic lab received the proper controls this morning so didn't need ours, but we were ready to provide just in case. Of all the cool papers that we publish, not sure if I could be prouder of everyone stepping up when needed.

We have RNA standards to validate PCR diagnostic assays (US CDC, China CDC, WHO) that we'll happily share with other clinical, surveillance and research labs. The "N" standards are created, just give us a couple of days to generate the rest.

details 👇
docs.google.com/document/d/1eN…

DM me if you are interested and we'll create a list and figure out a way to do shipping.