'We’re pursuing immunologic testing trying to look at antibody responses in individuals who have been exposed': David Perlin, PhD

David Perlin, PhD Hackensack Meridian Health Chief Scientific Officer, Center for Discovery and Innovation joins Yahoo Finance's On The Move to discuss how the HMC is seeking ways to treat the coronavirus.

Video Transcript

- And to talk more about what's going on in the medical community, we're joined by David Perlin. He is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Center for Discovery and innovation at the Hackensack Meridian Health-- at Hackensack Meridian Health. Excuse me.

David, thank you so much for joining us. So you just heard Anjalee talking about some of the latest developments there. What's going on there at the Center for Discovery and Innovation? What to you is the sort of most promising thread that you guys are pulling on right now?

DAVID PERLIN: So we're continuing to pursue rapid diagnostics. We had rolled out one of the first molecular diagnostics for rapid determination of three, four hour tests a few weeks ago.

We're pursuing immunological testing, trying to look at antibody responses in individuals who have been exposed so we can better understand the landscape and try to provide better access to testing. And then we're also screening for new drugs and looking for both drug and vaccine candidates, like many other groups.

- Hi, David. I was curious, when we get news from Andrew Cuomo, because New York is the hotspot in the country, that we've pushed the doubling-- remember they used say it would double every three days, then it was 4.7 days-- now they're saying it will double every six days. What does that tell us about what we're doing to prevent the spread?

DAVID PERLIN: Well in principle, it says that we have better testing, which we do. We have more tests available, still not quite where we need to be. But it also says that the containment strategy that's been implemented, where we're asking nonessential personnel to stay home, trying to ask people to use social distancing, and to basically exercise proper infection control measures seems to be working. So that that's a positive. But we have a long ways to go here.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Hey, it's Anjalee. So looking at on the testing side, I know that we have talked to you about what you've been able to accomplish with that test, that molecular diagnostic test. Can you explain how that compares to what's already out there? When you are talking about the high throughput test, which really sped up things, and Abbott's new Point of Care test, how does yours compare?

DAVID PERLIN: So our test is a three to four hour test. It's sort of semi-automated. And it effectively was a point of care, so we've put that into our clinical-- into our clinical laboratory within our hospital network, so that we could take patients who are at high risk for hospitalization, of which we have quite a few now, and then rapidly determine within the three hour three to four hour frame where they should go, whether they should be in isolation, whether they're positive or negative.

The problem was prior to a few weeks ago, even just a couple weeks ago, it would take sometimes three, four, five days to get to know whether you had a positive. So you had a patient who was presenting, and these days most patients are presenting with serious disease. People are waiting to come to the hospital, as we've told them to. But when they come, now they're serious. They have to be admitted.

And so we have to decide where to put them. So a rapid test is really critical. There are newer tests that are out there that, that are a bit faster. And that's terrific. It remains to be seen when they can be delivered.

Despite great promise, we haven't yet seen many of those tests just yet, certainly not in our hospital or in the hospitals of my colleagues. So we're waiting for those tests. But we need on-site tests. We need to have a rapid determination of whether a person is positive or negative.

- David, it also seems like even though we're still sort of behind and catching up on the diagnostic test, then we also need a test for immunity, right, to see if someone has had it without knowing or did know, and are they now-- do they have some level of immunity? Are you all working on that kind of a test as well?

DAVID PERLIN: Yeah, we are. And we're also evaluating from-- there are numerous vendors who have put these tests together, many of them from China. They are several months ahead of us, as you would expect. But a number of groups have put together these are serological tests, which look at the development of immunity, usually antibodies of a protective nature.

It's really critical, because it tells us who's been exposed, who's developed an immunological response. And then it also includes-- I mean, we have to expand this to others in the population who are not yet ill to understand who's been exposed, who's developed immunity, you know, are they protective?

And the nice thing about that is once you know that a person has an immunologic response, in principle, they're not going to become reinfected or develop disease. The flip side of it is that just because a person is negative in these tests doesn't mean they're not virus positive. These tests are not looking directly at virus. They're looking at the body's response to a viral infection.

DAN HOWLEY: Hey, David, this is Dan Howley. You know, we were seeing those reports of people being reinfected. And then there was kind of a comment I saw over the weekend that perhaps they weren't really reinfected.

It could have been a false positive or false negative test prior to that and that those tests coming back showing the reinfected really are just showing the minute amount of virus still left in their bodies after they've fought it off already. So is that kind of a better explanation than people are now being reinfected and that this is a virus that's going to continue to kind of roll throughout the world?

DAVID PERLIN: Dan, that's a great question. I think that, in my view, that's exactly what you're looking at, that a number of the tests, while they're very accurate in terms of what they're able to detect, they're not always as-- not every test is as sensitive.

And so sometimes what you're seeing is that patients who come up negative-- and we've found that patients-- and we typically do oral and nasal pharyngeal swabs in the nose and back of the throat-- and sometimes it's positive in the throat. And sometimes it's negative in the nose in the same patient and vise versa.

So it depends on how your sampling is done. We also know that there are patients who are positive, strongly positive, who get better. But then they show up with virus later. And there's probably a reservoir in the body, probably in the gastrointestinal tract.

That's why you get diarrhea and other problems. And so you know we recognize that it's not perfect. Viral load is really important here. And in some cases, though, it's not surprising that a patient who's now well might show signs of virus.

- David, finally, I know you're a scientist not in charge of the business side there. But I do want to ask you, any test that you all develop, are they for use exclusively at Hackensack Meridian Health? Would you all market them to a wider audience as well? And when you're talking about a crisis like this, . what level of monetizing do you think the medical community should be able to do, whether you're talking about tests or treatments?

DAVID PERLIN: So for our test, we reported that we licensed it to-- for a major diagnostic partner. And that's fine. They can commercialize it. But we also make our test available to whoever wants it. So we'll put it in place in any hospital and any group that wants to be able to use it right now. We have a national emergency. And under these circumstances, we have to make the test available. And so we're going to.

- David, thank you for your time. David Perlin is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Center for Discovery and Innovation at Hackensack Meridian Health. Thank you again for joining us. I appreciate it.