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The Medical Analysis Council (MRC) College of Glasgow Centre for Virus Analysis (CVR) has been on the forefront of its subject for numerous years.
However in 2020 their work turned much more vital – and time-sensitive – with the coronavirus spiralling into a world pandemic and the nation locked down on March 23.
One yr later, reporters got unique entry to a containment degree three (CL3) laboratory named after Professor Richard Elliott who labored within the virology unit and died simply because the lab opened in 2015.
Housed within the Sir Michael Stoker Constructing, which opened in 2005 on the college’s Garscube campus, Angela Elliott and Joyce Mitchell handle a fresh-faced and upbeat workforce of scientists in full private protecting gear (PPE) who’ve been working seven days every week to be able to acquire a greater understanding of SARS-CoV-2.
Among the many expertise used within the lab is a fluorescent microscope which analysis assistant Dr Wilhelm Furnon defined can observe which cells have been contaminated by a virus – and the unfold, exhibiting which of them may be contaminated within the coming hours or days.
He described the microscope as ‘a strong device for us to be able to check totally different medicine… or additionally to evaluate the effectivity of various vaccines’.
Dr Vanessa Herder PhD additionally confirmed how the workforce determines the titre (or focus) of a virus by including it to cells as they develop in a three-day course of.
She highlighted the significance of discarding tubes in disinfectant to verify ‘all the things is inactivated after being touched’ – and defined how straightforward it’s to disinfect coronavirus having labored with ‘many different viruses that are rather more tough to disinfect’.
The workforce solely wants and makes use of one 70% alcohol disinfectant for this course of which ends with changing one layer of gloves within the PPE and sporting a brand new pair to switch the samples in a disinfected tub to an incubator.
One other member of the workforce, Arthur Wickenhagen – a PhD scholar and analysis assistant – displayed one other course of to create a liquid which is used for experiments.
He mentioned: ‘As a result of the virus is inflicting fairly a bit of harm to the cells we need to separate our cells from the virus so we take a liquid, placing it within the tube and spinning all of the cells down in order that within the liquid solely the virus stays.’
‘We’re simply utilizing our pipettes, rigorously open up our flask after which slowly take the liquid… stuffed with infectious viral particles, then take a recent tube and punctiliously fill it.’
As soon as the workforce makes certain the tube is clear it then goes into totally different containers that are by no means opened outdoors the protection cupboards they work from.
Mr Wickenhagen additionally confirmed the GloMax, a brand new piece of apparatus within the lab which helps perform drug screens shortly.
He mentioned: ‘A few of these medicine are cytotoxic so we’re to see whether or not these medicine trigger the cells we’re utilizing to die and we’re doing that with the luminescence assays.
‘As soon as the medicine kill the cells, a substrate is launched that causes a lightweight expose and we are able to measure that mild with this machine.
‘If there are compounds which have killed the cells they’ll have releases stuff into the liquid that then creates a lightweight sign that we are able to choose up.’
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