NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- The recent news about the FDA's Emergency Use Authorization for SalivaDirect, a test for COVID-19 developed at Yale, highlighted the role that basketball played in the test's development. The NBA and the NBA Players Association funded the project and the test was administered to a group of NBA players and staff as the league prepared to resume the 2019-20 season. But the pro ballers were not the only athletes who helped get the test ready for widespread deployment in the battle against the pandemic. Behind the scenes a former Yale field hockey goalie -- Chaney Kalinich '19 -- also played a key role.

The SalivaDirect test is non-invasive, relatively inexpensive, works around supply chain limitations and requires minimal training. That makes it an ideal option for mass testing that could help contain the virus. Kalinich, Yale's student manager last season, works in Grubaugh Lab, the lab that developed the test. She has been listed as an author on four research papers, including one as lead author, about COVID-19 and built the CovidTracker website to help track the spread of the disease in Connecticut. She also is listed as an author on two preprints related to SalivaDirect that are undergoing review.

For Kalinich, the events of the last few months have affirmed her commitment to focusing her career on public health.

"I've wanted to pursue a medical career focused on public health and infectious disease for many years, so in a way the training I sought out and the subjects I studied were always to prepare me to respond to disease-related threats -- I just didn't think it would be so big, or so soon," Kalinich said. 

After getting her B.S. from Yale in 2019, Kalinich began working with the Grubaugh lab for her summer internship required for her MPH (which was a collaboration with the CDC in Puerto Rico, where she worked in 2017). In the fall of 2019 she continued with the lab part-time as a laboratory technician. She completed her thesis with the lab while she completed her MPH classes. 

"Around early February, the lab as a whole pivoted towards COVID-19," Kalinich said. "The first week of March, when a large number of cases were confirmed in the US, was when I really joined the COVID-19 response. We were trying to launch what became the IMPACT biorepository -- a way of collecting samples for research -- and were really struggling to find the supplies needed for testing, as the whole world was buying them all up. This was especially true of the swabs needed, so we (led by Anne Wyllie) looked at saliva instead, and found that it actually worked just about as well (and sometimes better) [compared to tests that require nasal swabs]."

The initial saliva vs. swab test was run by Wyllie, an assistant research scientist who began working with Grubaugh lab during the pandemic. Throughout the months of April, May and June (and to a lesser extent in July/August), a couple of other lab techs and recently graduated PhD students processed hundreds of samples per day for the IMPACT biorepository, which was the source for all the samples used to validate saliva and develop the test (as well as for numerous other COVID-19 related research projects at Yale). 

To figure out how to cut out the extraction step and process plates full of samples (instead of individual tubes), Kalinich and her colleagues would "spike in" known amounts of viral RNA to SARS-CoV-2-free saliva and perform the test with a variety of conditions. Their goal was to determine how much they could cut down on cost, time, and reagents and still be able to detect the viral RNA efficiently. She performed a number of these early validation/development tests.

The Emergency Use Authorization was thus the culmination of months of work, and Kalinich said the whole lab "took a sigh of relief" when it was granted.  

Kalinich has been involved in responding to the pandemic in multiple ways. She has worked at the respite center that Yale-New Haven Health set up for people experiencing homelessness who have tested positive for COVID-19. She got her EMT certification two years ago and became part of the New Haven Medical Reserve Corps, then was called into duty earlier this year. She plans to remain in the MRC as long as she can.

"Right now the respite shelter is not open, as case numbers are low, but the MRC is ready to go at a moment's notice if we're needed for another iteration," Kalinich said. "The volunteers who spent a lot of time there all got pretty close with one another, which I am so grateful for -- this group taught me an incredible amount in such a short time about how effective healthcare teams work, how to problem-solve with a harm-reduction lens, how to get things done, and how to care for one another and be kind under stressful and uncertain conditions." 

And while she qualifies as a "Healthcare Hero", Kalinich is quick to pass the credit along.

"I was just one piece of a really big puzzle, both with SalivaDirect and the COVID-19 Respite Center," she said. "There are so many people involved in these, including researchers in my lab and other institutions for SalivaDirect, and the other MRC volunteers, the Respite Center medical director Dr. David Rosenthal, and administrators with the city for the Respite Center."

Kalinich also credits her time as a Bulldog for teaching her valuable lessons. 

"On a day-to-day level, time management skills I developed as a student-athlete were necessary during March/April, when I was a full-time student, writing my thesis, TFing a class, working with the MRC, and working in the lab," she said. "It was extremely stressful between incredibly long days, a wacky sleep schedule involving overnight shifts and daytime classes, and worrying about the world and my community. As a goalie, I learned to compartmentalize stress and get the work done, then decompress and process in manageable chunks when I had the time and space, and this skill was really vital. And even though I couldn't go to the gym or devote a ton of time to exercise, quick workouts a few days a week did a lot to keep me sane."
 
A native of Glen Ellyn, Ill., Kalinich got her B.S. in biochemistry in 2019 and then received her Master's degree in Public Health from Yale in the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases department this past spring. In addition to her time playing for the Bulldogs, she played for the Puerto Rican National Team in the FIH Open Series in Salamanca, Mexico in June of 2018. 
 
Kalinich, a three-time NFHCA National Academic Squad selection, is now attending the Yale School of Medicine. Her father, Kevin Kalinich '84, played football at Yale.