Biography

Alaina is a research scientist at the University of Washington in Dr. Jerry
Cangelosi’s lab. The group focuses on pathogen detection in clinical
and environmental samples, and epidemiology of infectious diseases.
Since joining the group in 2016 Alaina has worked on the development
and evaluation of molecular methods for TB diagnostics; the most
recent being a probe-based hybridization capture protocol to detect
Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA in oral swabs. Since first validating
oral swabs for TB detection in 2015, Dr. Cangelosi’s lab has focused on
developing and implementing oral swabs for TB testing in clinical and
community settings.

Expertise

TB Diagnostics
Public Health

Key Impacts

Tongue swab based targeted universal TB testing in people living with HIV in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

High-sensitivity laboratory methods enabled the detection of participants with TB using a non-sputum specimen in this active case-finding context. Swab testing outperformed urine LAM testing in this cohort.

Source: Conference 2024