The Packard Foundation features one of its grantees and her lab’s research. In this story, Prof. Theberge describes innovations such as the CandyCollect and homeRNA, a gentler alternative to the swab and a patient-friendly approach to transcriptomics that can be used anywhere in the world.

Transcriptomic responses to wildfire smoke are difficult to study given the unpredictability of wildfires and the challenges of collecting blood during active disasters. To overcome these challenges, the authors demonstrate a flexible study design leveraging homeRNA. Between June 2021 and April 2022, 58 participants across 10 U.S. states collected 635 blood samples before, during, and after wildfire events.

Transcriptomic responses to wildfire smoke are difficult to study given the unpredictability of wildfires and the challenges of collecting blood during active disasters. To overcome these challenges, the authors demonstrate a flexible study design leveraging homeRNA. Between June 2021 and April 2022, 58 participants across 10 U.S. states collected 635 blood samples before, during, and after wildfire events.

As wildfire seasons grow longer and more intense, understanding how smoke affects our bodies is more critical than ever. A recent story from the University of Washington's Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) highlights how innovative "at-home" science is helping researchers crack the code on our immune responses to smoke.

The American Chemical Society has highlighted a publication from its journal on the topic of CandyCollect - a lollipop-like pediatric sampling technology.

In this publication, the authors determined the efficacy of CandyCollect, a lollipop-inspired open-microfluidic pathogen collection device, to capture Group A Streptococcus (GAS) and compared user preference for CandyCollect, conventional pharyngeal swabs, or mouth swabs in children with pharyngitis and their caregivers.

In this nationwide prospective cohort study, the authors leveraged a Tasso-SST based self-blood collection and stabilization tool (homeRNA) to profile detailed kinetics of the presymptomatic to convalescence host immunity to contemporaneous respiratory pathogens.

This study expands upon previous work on homeRNA through a systematic study exploring the effects of high temperature on RNA integrity (represented as RNA Integrity Number, RIN) through in-lab and field experiments.

In this publication, the authors performed the first human subjects study using the CandyCollect device, a lollipop-inspired saliva collection device. They demonstrated that (1) the CandyCollect device can be used to collect salivary bacteria from healthy adults, and (2) the CandyCollect device was ranked the highest preference sampling method among the three sampling methods.

This study presents an at-home self-collection methodology using homeRNA to study the host transcriptional response during acute SARS-CoV-2 infections. This method uniquely enables high frequency measurement of the host immune kinetics in non-hospitalized adults during the acute and most dynamic stage of their infection.

To improve the testing experience for strep throat, the laboratory of Prof. Theberge developed a novel lollipop-inspired sampling platform (called CandyCollect) to capture bacteria in saliva. The device can be used in clinics or in the home and shipped back to a lab for analysis, integrating with telemedicine.

This study investigated the robustness of the home RNA kit in high temperature settings via two small pilot studies in Doha, Qatar (no. participants = 8), and the Western and South Central USA during the summer of 2021, which included a heatwave of unusually high temperatures in some locations…

homeRNA: a kit for self-collection of peripheral blood (∼0.5 mL) and immediate stabilization of cellular RNA, using the Tasso-SST blood collection device with a specially designed stabilizer tube containing RNAlater.

Inspired by wet scrubbers, the authors developed a device fundamentally different from existing portable air samplers by using aerosolized microdroplets to capture aerosols in personal spaces (e.g., homes, offices, and schools). The aerosol-sampling device is the size of a small teapot, can be operated without specialized training, and features a winding flow path in a supersaturated relative humidity environment, enabling droplet growth.