ASU is leading the development of technology that can quickly assess the amount of radiation thousands of people have suffered after a radiological disaster.

The technology would process samples in a few hours and would allow doctors to effectively treat sufferers.

“As compared to current methodologies that are out there, this is orders of magnitude faster than these other methods that have been used,” said Carl Yamashiro, the principal investigator for the research project.

Yamashiro works out of ASU’s Biodesign Institute on the Tempe campus and helps manage the research project, which collaborates with seven other institutions for the five-year project that started last month.

The research project is important so people can be treated quickly and to reduce panic, said David Brenner, the director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University.

“If there was a radiological event, the object of the terrorist essentially is to spread panic and chaos,” he said. “If you could reassure people by giving them a very swift test … in a sense you’re defeating the bad guys.”

Brenner is also director of one of the Centers for Medical Countermeasures Against Radiation (CMCR) that is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and manages the research from his center, which started in 2005 and led to the current research at ASU.

The center’s research is similar to ASU’s because it will allow medical personnel to accurately treat people who are exposed to radiation, he said. ASU has contributed to this research for the past four years.

Yamashiro said the research team will work with subcontractor Tecan Group Ltd. on building a box that can contain the entire system to allow scientists to analyze up to 2,000 people per day, per instrument to measure their exposure to radiation.

For the measurement, individuals would have a small amount of blood taken, which a special type of chemistry would help scientists understand the effects of the radiation, Yamashiro said.

The processing time would be in hours, compared to days from previous research. Other technologies are not able to process the results that the future “box” will, he said.

The first step of the research is to demonstrate that the blood taken from people affected by radiation can be drawn over the period of a week after a radiological event and still be effectively processed within a few hours.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) gave the research project a $40.8 million award.

Yamashiro said scientists can look at genes to measure how people are affected by radiation.

“The assumption is that you’re going to get different types of cellular responses based on the type of damage that [radiation] induces,” he said.

The tools used to identify and provide effective treatment for radiation could also have other medical applications.

“We have a large number of diagnostic tests that we’re developing now, generally in cancer and infectious diseases, that run with the same technology,” said Bruce Seligmann, the founder and chief science officer of High Throughput Genomics, Inc., which is one of the other subcontractors.

Hospitals will want the technology because it runs routine tests faster and with more samples, he said. When needed, the boxes can also test thousands of people for radiation exposure.

“At the end of the five years, it won’t be ready to be in the clinic, but it will be well on its way,” Yamashiro said.

Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu