For our project, we explored the growth of the ASU BioDesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL) from a standard university research lab to a COVID-19 testing facility through a business lens. The lab has pioneered the saliva-test in the Western United States. This thesis analyzes the laboratory from various business concepts and aspects. The business agility of the lab and it’s quickness to innovation has allowed the lab to enjoy great success. Looking into the future, the laboratory has a promising future and will need to answer many questions to remain the premier COVID-19 testing institution in Arizona.

For our project, we explored the growth of the ASU BioDesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL) from a standard university research lab to a COVID-19 testing facility through a business lens. The lab has pioneered the saliva-test in the Western United States. This thesis analyzes the laboratory from various business concepts and aspects. The business agility of the lab and it’s quickness to innovation has allowed the lab to enjoy great success. Looking into the future, the laboratory has a promising future and will need to answer many questions to remain the premier COVID-19 testing institution in Arizona.

For our project, we explored the growth of the ASU BioDesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL) from a standard university research lab to a COVID-19 testing facility through a business lens. The lab has pioneered the saliva-test in the Western United States. This thesis analyzes the laboratory from various business concepts and aspects. The business agility of the lab and it’s quickness to innovation has allowed the lab to enjoy great success. Looking into the future, the laboratory has a promising future and will need to answer many questions to remain the premier COVID-19 testing institution in Arizona.

For our project, we explored the growth of the ASU BioDesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL) from a standard university research lab to a COVID-19 testing facility through a business lens. The lab has pioneered the saliva-test in the Western United States. This thesis analyzes the laboratory from various business concepts and aspects. The business agility of the lab and it’s quickness to innovation has allowed the lab to enjoy great success. Looking into the future, the laboratory has a promising future and will need to answer many questions to remain the premier COVID-19 testing institution in Arizona.

Early on in the pandemic, ASU leadership recognized an opportunity to involve the Biodesign Institute in an effort to keep local communities safe. Equipped with capital investments (and expertise) in diagnostic testing, university president Michael Crow tasked Dr. Joshua LaBaer - the executive director of Biodesign - to begin mapping out the lab’s logistic capabilities and operational plan. While initially testing through nasopharyngeal swabs, the Arizona Biodesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL) eventually developed a saliva-based COVID-19 test that demonstrated higher efficacy and resource-efficiency. By maintaining rapid turnaround times for test results, the ABCTL has helped both the university population and local community operate safely. Lauded as a highly innovative testing site, the lab proved to be an essential asset as ASU, and the world, look to return to normalcy. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the ABCTL’s inception and development using multi-faceted approaches from the business realm. There will be five topics discussed which are: • Volume I- Stakeholder Theory and Analysis Regarding the COVID-19 Bio-design Institute at Arizona State University (Claire Agee), • Volume II- The Lab as a Business Within a University Environment (Samuel Cosgrove) • Volume III- A Managerial Economic Perspective (Michael Qian) • Volume IV- An Analysis of its Upstream Supply Chain ( Kyle Mattson) • Volume V- An Operations Management Perspective (Corinne English) After these volumes, there will be a discussion about the growth and sustainability of the laboratory looking into the future. Although the ABCTL is young,the ever-changing market dynamics leave the organization with critical decisions going forward.

This Project Report documents the accomplishments of an extraordinary group of students, faculty, and staff at the Arizona state University, who participated in a year-long, multidisciplinary, first-of-its-kind academic endeavor entitled “The Making of a COVID Lab.” The lab that is the focus of this project is the ASU Biodesign Clinical Testing Laboratory, known simply as the ABCTL.

Under the direction of Dr. Carolyn Compton, a group of seven Barrett honors students have embarked on a truly unique team thesis project to create a documentary on the process of creating a COVID-19 testing laboratory. This documentary tells the story of the ASU Biodesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL), the first lab in the western United States to offer public saliva testing to identify the presence of COVID-19.

Dehalococcoides mccartyi strains are of particular importance for bioremediation due to their unique capability of transforming perchloroethene (PCE) and trichloroethene (TCE) to non-toxic ethene, through the intermediates cis-dichloroethene (cis-DCE) and vinyl chloride (VC). Despite the widespread environmental distribution of Dehalococcoides, biostimulation sometimes fails to promote dechlorination beyond cis-DCE. In our study, microcosms established with garden soil and mangrove sediment also stalled at cis-DCE, albeit Dehalococcoides mccartyi containing the reductive dehalogenase genes tceA, vcrA and bvcA were detected in the soil/sediment inocula. Reductive dechlorination was not promoted beyond cis-DCE, even after multiple biostimulation events with fermentable substrates and a lengthy incubation.

However, transfers from microcosms stalled at cis-DCE yielded dechlorination to ethene with subsequent enrichment cultures containing up to 10⁹ Dehalococcoides mccartyi cells mL^-1. Proteobacterial classes which dominated the soil/sediment communities became undetectable in the enrichments, and methanogenic activity drastically decreased after the transfers. We hypothesized that biostimulation of Dehalococcoides in the cis-DCE-stalled microcosms was impeded by other microbes present at higher abundances than Dehalococcoides and utilizing terminal electron acceptors from the soil/sediment, hence, outcompeting Dehalococcoides for H₂. In support of this hypothesis, we show that garden soil and mangrove sediment microcosms bioaugmented with their respective cultures containing Dehalococcoides in high abundance were able to compete for H² for reductive dechlorination from one biostimulation event and produced ethene with no obvious stall. Overall, our results provide an alternate explanation to consolidate conflicting observations on the ubiquity of Dehalococcoides mccartyi and occasional stalling of dechlorination at cis-DCE; thus, bringing a new perspective to better assess biological potential of different environments and to understand microbial interactions governing bioremediation.