2022

December

Wookyeom Kim joins Lutz Lab

Wookyeom received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Pusan National University and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from POSTECH in South Korea. He studied Lung-on-a-chip, which cultures inkjet bioprinted human alveolar models.

When he went to a low medical resources country to deliver medical services, he witnessed the majority of patients just going back with some painkillers instead of appropriate treatment due to the absence of diagnostic equipment for a low-resource setting. Ever since the visit, Wookyeom has been dreaming of developing an innovative point-of-care testing method so that anyone can receive appropriate treatment. His research interest involves the development of a tuberculosis cfDNA capturing method from accessible liquid biopsies such as urine.

Out of the lab, Wookyeom enjoys playing tennis and cooking.

Rhett Britton joins Lutz Lab

Rhett is from Nashville, Tennessee, and earned his B.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2020. His undergraduate research included projects in structural biology and microfluidics.

After graduation, Rhett worked as a research assistant in the Chilkoti lab at Duke University where he developed rapid point-of-care COVID-19 antigen assays. His long-term interest in diagnostic technologies intended for low-resource settings around the globe led him to join the Lutz lab in 2022. He is currently working on the development of an assay to detect drug-resistant tuberculosis strains from urine cell-free DNA.

Outside of the lab, Rhett loves to travel, hike, kayak, play piano and ukulele, and cheer on the Nashville Predators and Tennessee Titans.

February 7

Nuttada Panpradist featured on UW Bioengineering News: "New Ph.D. grad Nuttada Panpradist ready for next challenge: faculty position"

Having successfully defended her Ph.D. in Dec. 2021, Nuttada is featured on her accomplishments and contributions to UW Bioengineering as a Ph.D. student, and her contributions to the success of the Lutz Lab. She is recognized for having the "heart of a leader".

Follow Nuttada's journey:
Nuttada's website
Nuttada's blog

January 24

Featured on Local Newscast for Harmony Kit COVID-testing

Dr. Lutz is the senior author on a paper published Dec. 15 in Science Advances that describes the Harmony COVID-19 test kit. The team developed Harmony to be simple and easy-to-use, employing ready-to-use reagents. The test uses a “PCR-like” method to detect the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA genome in a nasal swab sample with the aid of a small, low-cost detector, which was also designed by the Lutz Lab. A smartphone is used to operate the detector and read the results. The detector can handle up to four samples at a time and would fit into a standard car’s glove compartment.

2021

August 16

$14.9M Awarded to Lutz Lab’s COVID-19 Technology Company

Anavasi Diagnostics, a company recently founded out of Professor Barry Lutz’s lab at the University of Washington, announced it has been awarded $14.9 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx^SM) initiative. The funding will accelerate the launch and broad market availability of the AscencioDx™ molecular diagnostic platform for the detection of RNA indicative of the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 virus.

The project was initiated less than a year ago and advanced quickly with coaching and support from the WE-REACH team and the NIH RADx initiative. Learn more about the exciting journey this team has been on as they moved their technology from university-based research to a funded commercial enterprise.

August 16

Read about the SARS-CoV-2 technology developed from Lutz lab @uwbioe MedRxiv. A novel four-plexed RT-LAMP test kit operated by health workers can provide faster and more sensitive results than lab tests. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.12.21261875v1.full.pdf+html

August 9

Garima Thakur Hired As Lutz Lab Manager
Garima graduated with Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Miami, FL, and worked as a CERC post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alberta, Canada. Before joining Lutz lab as lab operations manager/research scientist, she worked as Lab & Research Director at SoundBio Lab, Seattle. She's excited to join Lutz Lab and will work on lab operations and conduct research.

The motivation for her research is her intellectual drive toward smaller dimensions to explore size-dependent novel properties and phenomena. Over the past 13 years, Garima'ss research focus has been on nanotechnology to design and develop complex biomolecular smart materials for biosensing and biomedical research applications. Her background in research includes surface chemistry, protein self-assembly, protein aggregation, nanomaterials, biosensing using nanomechanical deflection, and spectroscopic methods for the benefit of biotechnology. Garima's primary research contributions involve, but are not limited to inhibition of amyloid beta fibrillation, Langmuir monolayer models for lipid raft research, protein patterning, self-assembled hydrogels, and nanomechanical deflection sensing for point-of-care diagnostics.

Garima volunteers for SoundBio and ACS Puget Sound Section as a member of the Diversity Equity Inclusion and Respect (DEIR) Committee and Women Chemist Committee (WCC) in her free time. She was recently nominated as Alternate Councillor at ACS Puget Sound Section of ACS. Another of Garima's passions is to create workshops or courses for a wider audience and she enjoys reviewing journal articles for peer-reviewed journals.

June 10

Nuttada Panpradist Receives UW College of Engineering Award
Nuttada Panpradist’s impressive academic career includes 13 publications, 17 conference proceedings, and four patent applications. Her simple point-of-care tests detect HIV genetic mutations to help doctors prescribe non-resistant drugs. She designed rapid lab tests for COVID-19 and devices to ensure patients are taking their TB medication. She has collaborated with various researchers on COVID-19 projects such as developing new methods to detect SARS-CoV-2 in Seattle to validating point-of-care tests in pediatric clinics. As a mentor, Panpradist connects undergraduate students with research projects that match their interests. All her students have received research scholarships and are named co-authors and co-inventors of patents. “Nuttada has gone above and beyond to foster our new collaboration; beyond her scientific acumen, she is an attentive and professional partner, mature beyond her years, conscientious, flexible, able to balance multiple responsibilities, and has an impressive work ethic.”

June 9

Lutz Lab's Nuttada Panpradist will join an expert panel at today's WE-REACH fireside chat to discuss biomedical business models, budgets, and funding sources. https://www.seattleangelconference.com

Other experts who will be on the panel are:

• John Sechrest, CEO, Seattle Angel Conference

• Elizabeth Cross Nichol, APIS Health Angels, Seattle

• Minda Brusse, First Row Partners, Seattle

Previously Lutz Lab received funding from WE-REACH to support the commercialization of the point-of-care COVID-19 test.

Read here.

June 7
Congratulations to Nuttada for being recognized for outstanding contributions to UW Bioengineering research! The UW College of Engineering Awards acknowledged the extraordinary efforts of the college’s teaching and research assistants, staff and faculty members.

Nuttada Panpradist’s impressive academic career includes 13 publications, 17 conference proceedings, and four patent applications. Her simple point-of-care tests detect HIV genetic mutations to help doctors prescribe non-resistant drugs. She designed rapid lab tests for COVID-19 and devices to ensure patients are taking their TB medication. She has collaborated with various researchers on COVID-19 projects such as developing new methods to detect SARS-CoV-2 in Seattle to validating point-of-care tests in pediatric clinics. As a mentor, Panpradist connects undergraduate students with research projects that match their interests. All her students have received research scholarships and are named as co-authors and co-inventors of patents. “Nuttada has gone above and beyond to foster our new collaboration; beyond her scientific acumen, she is an attentive and professional partner, mature beyond her years, conscientious, flexible, able to balance multiple responsibilities, and has an impressive work ethic.”

05/26
Amy passed her Ph.D. defense, titled "Improving diagnosis of tuberculosis from urine cell-free DNA." Congratulations Amy!"

02/01
Nuttada's paper from 2014 on swabs for point-of-care testing is getting a lot of attention lately. She characterized the release of samples from different nasal swab types, including the effect of manual agitation and a novel design for flow-through swabs - very relevant today for Covid testing. She is working on a follow-up paper - coming soon!