Strengthening research to tackle drug contamination in low-resource settings

On a recent visit to Notre Dame University in Indiana, USA, Professor Anne Parle made strides in a collaborative project to detect impurities in a drug that is used in cancer treatment. The visit also strengthened ties between DCU Life Sciences Institute (LSI) and The Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health.

Seed funding from both institutions kick-started the cross-Atlantic research collaboration between Professor Parle, who is DCU LSI’s director, and Prof Marya Liebermann, whose lab at Notre Dame Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health  focuses on technologies to address healthcare disparities, including detecting impurities in drug samples.  

The Parle-Liebermann collaboration centres on a new method to identify impurities in L-asparaginase, a drug used in the treatment of childhood leukaemia, and the technology has the potential to protect patients from substandard medicines. 

“L-asparaginase is a relatively straightforward drug to produce, because bacteria naturally make it,” explains Professor Parle. 

“But in low-resource settings, where robust quality control systems are not always in place, rogue manufacturers can produce the drug to an inadequate standard, and clinicians have no easy way of knowing whether what they're injecting into children is safe and effective. At best, the drug may not be active enough to work. At worst, it could contain bacterial proteins capable of causing toxic shock.”

The goal of the Liebermann-Parle project is to develop a rapid, on-the-spot test that can be carried out before administration, thereby giving clinicians in the field a simple, reliable way to verify the purity of the drug. 

At the heart of their approach is to look for traces of DNA or RNA left behind from the E. coli bacteria used to produce the drug, because such contamination would be a red flag for impurity. During the Notre Dame visit, the team successfully trialled a CRISPR-Cas assay developed in Professor Parle’s lab. 

“Crucially, we were able to test the approach using fairly simple equipment, which was a deliberate test of whether the assay could work in resource-limited environments, and it did,” says Professor Parle. “By combining my lab’s expertise with DNA and RNA detection with Prof Liebermann’s expertise in technologies that can be used in low-resource settings, we were able to advance the project.” 

As well as the lab work, the visit was also an important opportunity to build on the growing relationship between DCU LSI and The Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health, and Professor Parle delivered a seminar to the Notre Dame community about her journey from research in folate through to using CRISPR-Cas9 technology in genome editing of mammalian cells and, more recently, in the detection of environmental DNA. 

“CRISPR-Cas9 technology is extremely powerful, and we are using it to detect differences as small as a single nucleic acid in DNA and RNA sequences,” says Professor Parle. 

“The seed-funded collaboration between LSI and The Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health  means we can look at applying it to improve the safety of delivering this important anti-cancer drug in low-resource settings.”