Published April 2002

CombiMatrix on front lines of biowarfare

By Eric Fetters
Herald Business Writer

Since a wave of anthrax-contaminated mail infected several people and spread fear across the nation, the specter of bioterrorism has passed out of the headlines.

But the problem of detecting anthrax and other biological terrors before they sicken or kill people again lingers.

CombiMatrix Corp. of Mukilteo already has developed semiconductor chips that use antibodies to detect deadly organisms. Now the company’s focus is on refining those chips and making them work in monitoring devices that can be used from the battlefield to the post office.

“Considering the current state of affairs and the interest our technology has received, we plan to pursue this application of our technology through additional collaborations with appropriate government agencies,” said Amit Kumar, President and Chief Executive Officer at CombiMatrix.

Some of the chips CombiMatrix has made, with help from U.S. Department of Defense funding, can detect more than a dozen different agents used in biological and chemical weapons.

“Anthrax isn’t the only thing out there. There’s small pox, there’s Ebola, and there are all kinds of things out there that aren’t micro-organisms,” said Don Montgomery, CombiMatrix co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. “The chip can look for a lot of things simultaneously.”

While the company has worked with the Defense Department since 1999, its work obviously took on more urgency last fall. Montgomery said he stood a few weeks ago in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., where anthrax-tainted letters produced panic in October and forced senators and their staff members to evacuate.

“Everybody there now knows what anthrax is. That wasn’t the case a year ago,” he said.

And instead of developing only hand-held biowarfare detectors for the battlefield, CombiMatrix is now looking at using its chips in equipment that can be installed in public buildings and be used for general homeland defense.

Founded in the San Francisco area in late 1995, CombiMatrix moved last year from Snoqualmie to the quiet Harbour Pointe Tech Center overlooking Puget Sound. A majority-owned subsidiary of Acacia Research Corp., the company’s core technology marries semiconductor chips with synthetic genes or proteins for “biochips.”

CombiMatrix can custom-program each chip to make DNA, peptides or small molecules, depending on the needs of pharmaceutical and biotechnology researchers. Last year, the firm signed a 15-year agreement to have Roche Applied Science purchase, use and resell CombiMatrix’s biochips.

The 1-square-centimeter chips designed for biowarfare defense use electrochemical analysis to check air samples. Antibodies on the chips bind to certain biological and chemical weapon agents when they are found in the air.

Tests with Bacillus globigii — similar in structure to anthrax — have shown the chips can detect as few as 50 spores, Montgomery said. It normally takes 10,000 to 20,000 spores of anthrax to infect a person.

Detectors with such chips could save the lives of postal workers if someone decides to send anthrax through the mail again. Five people, including postal workers, died last year after handling tainted letters that passed through the mail.

“It’s likely there were little puffs of anthrax that came out before it hit the main postal center,” Montgomery said. “If they’d been able to detect it at low levels in the local post offices or in postal trucks, they likely would have been able to find it before it became a problem.”

A prototype of the handheld detection device the Department of Defense wants is still a few months away. But the company can also package it in a larger device suitable for use in buildings. Spokesman Bret Undem said CombiMatrix is exploring potential uses with the U.S. Postal Service and other agencies.

CombiMatrix is just one of several companies in the state and elsewhere working on anthrax detection technology. Despite the advances made by the biotech firms, creating the perfect monitoring device will not be easy.

“It’s a hard problem,” said Barbara Seiders, who manages the biological and chemical defense programs at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. “There are a lot of incredibly bright people working in many labs on this.”

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