This year may not have been the smooth return to normal many expected, but Memphis’ penchant for clever thinking and creative problem solving continues unabated. In 2021, for our ninth Innovation Awards running, Inside Memphis Business features prominent individuals and bright thinkers who are showcasing Memphis’ evolution through innovation. And like every year, there are always plenty of candidates to choose from, spanning industries ranging from the medical field to logistics.
This year, we recognize Chloe Hakim-Moore’s reforms to childcare and early education, Mason George’s new technology to ease congested supply chain issues, Dr. Leta Nutt’s chemical sterilant meant to cut down on the overwhelming number of stray animals, and Dr. Michael Whitt’s crucial contribution to the production of effective Covid-19 vaccines. They're all worthy winners in their own right, and are doing their utmost to move Memphis forward. Today, we introduce you to Dr. Whitt; other winners will be profiled throughout December.
photograph courtesy UTHSC
Dr. Michael Whitt — Professor, UTHSC
Professor Michael Whitt’s innovation in virus research from two decades ago has been innovatively adapted to help develop Covid-19 vaccines.
Whitt currently serves as the associate dean of the Office of Medical Education in the school's College of Medicine. But his career at UTHSC began back when he joined the university in 1991 and in the mid-1990s developed a testing protocol that allowed researchers to study highly pathogenic viruses. A key element was that the work could be done in a Biosafety Level-2 environment. The challenge with the current pandemic is that a Biosafety Level-3 laboratory is required to work with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Such labs have much higher safety protocols, and most companies do not have them. But the surrogate system that Whitt developed allows crucial testing that can use the Level-2 standard.
“As long as they have the ability to do cell culture work and have a Biosafety Level-2 facility, any lab around the world can use this and use it safely,” he says.
“We can take information from a new virus … and plug it into our system and generate materials that could be used to screen for the presence of neutralizing antibodies, when someone is either infected or after they've been vaccinated.” — Dr. Michael Whitt
Developers of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine needed a way to test its efficacy, and Whitt’s system enabled that. But it’s not just Pfizer: “We’ve gotten a ton of requests,” he says, “from not only individual research labs, but companies that also requested material. Some companies also asked if we could make materials for them, so we entered into subcontracts with some of them to make these pseudovirus surrogate virus particles that had the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.” More than 170 companies and universities in more than 30 countries have used these materials during the pandemic.
The system Whitt developed in the 1990s was able to develop ways to infect and kill cancerous cells without harming healthy cells. The current coronavirus required scientists to test the inhibitory effects of the antibodies generated after vaccination on virus infection. “We can take information from a new virus,” he says, “and as long as we have the ability to get the molecular clone for the important part, which is the spike protein, we can plug it into our system and generate materials that could be used to screen, for instance, for the presence of neutralizing antibodies, when someone is either infected or after they've been vaccinated.”
He says it’s adaptable to any new pathogen that might be found and the material can be generated in about three days. It doesn’t work for every virus, but it does with those that have a membrane envelope or a lipid bi-layer that surrounds them. That includes influenza, Ebola, and SARS-CoV-2 and its variants.
“The surrogate viruses that we use for the Covid analysis or antibody analysis from people infected or vaccinated against Covid, are what we call single cycle vectors,” Whitt says. “On the outside of the virus, it looks just like a SARS-CoV-2 or just like Ebola. That virus will bind to cells and enter cells just like those separate viruses. But once inside the cell, they produce a signal — we call it a reporter — that allows us to easily measure whether that cell was infected. Then what is released is a non-infectious particle. So, it’s a very different scheme.”
