Irene Bosch is a

Venezuelan Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

biologist and researcher graduated from the

Central University of Venezuela The Central University of Venezuela (Spanish: ''Universidad Central de Venezuela''; UCV) is a public university of Venezuela located in Caracas. It is widely held to be the highest ranking institution in the country, and it also ranks 18th in L ...

with two doctorates from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in molecular biology and tropical medicine, with extensive experience in research on dengue, zika and

chikungunya Chikungunya is an infection caused by the ''Chikungunya virus'' (CHIKV). Symptoms include fever and joint pains. These typically occur two to twelve days after exposure. Other symptoms may include headache, muscle pain, joint swelling, and a ra ...

. By 2012, she developed rapid tests to detect these mosquito-borne diseases, creating the rapid test for dengue fever, on sale in

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

, and the device for zika and chikungunya, which also allows early detection of the diseases. In 2018, Bosch founded with a group of scientists and Lee Gehrke, a professor at Harvard University and MIT, E25Bio, a company dedicated to making rapid tests for infectious diseases. By 2020, the group created a rapid test for diagnosing virus diseases aimed at helping to contain the spread of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

: the Dart Direct Antigen Rapid Test.

References

Venezuelan biologists Harvard University alumni Central University of Venezuela alumni COVID-19 researchers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Women biologists 21st-century biologists 21st-century Venezuelan women scientists 21st-century Venezuelan scientists {{Venezuela-scientist-stub