Metabolic phenotyping using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) has been applied to the characterization of the metabolic effects of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection on human blood plasma. Metabolomic analysis was used to quantify key lipid and protein components of blood samples collected from...
INTEGRA Biosciences’ cost-effective liquid handling products are ideal for molecular diagnostics workflows, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis, making it easy for labs to scale up their testing capacities quickly and easily. It is often assumed that high throughput can only be achieved with huge investment. This simply isn’t the case with INTEGRA’s affordable pipetting solutions, which can increase lab productivity and the reproducibility of results, without the need for large liquid handling platforms and at an affordable price.
The Native Antigen Company (now part of LGC’s Clinical Diagnostics Division), one of the world’s leading suppliers of reagents that enables research into vaccines and diagnostics for emerging and endemic infectious diseases, has announced the introduction of ten new monoclonal antibodies recognising SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19. These ten antibodies recognise different epitopes of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike glycoprotein, nine of which are SARS-CoV-2-specific and do not cross-react with other human coronaviruses...
PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader committed to innovating for a healthier world, has announced that the first Turnkey Lighthouse lab in Newport, South Wales, is now processing COVID-19 testing samples as part of the Company’s collaboration with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in support of the UK Government’s Test and Trace strategy...
Cobra Biologics (Cobra), part of the Cognate BioServices family, an international CDMO manufacturer of biological materials and pharmaceuticals, and Scancell Holdings plc (Scancell), the developer of novel immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and infectious disease, today announced that they have entered into a collaboration for Cobra to manufacture Scancell’s COVID-19 vaccine....
The UK Government has entered into a contract with Abingdon Health, on behalf of the UK-Rapid Test Consortium (“UK-RTC”), for the supply of the AbC-19TM Rapid Antibody tests. As part of the contract the UK Government has placed its first order for one million COVID-19 rapid antibody tests. This follows an independent evaluation commissioned by the UK government of the AbC-19TM Rapid Antibody test, which will be published in full in due course by PHE, after peer review....
Phase 3 clinical trials are underway for COVID-19 vaccines, some of which call for an ultra-low freezer for storage and transport. Examples described in a September Wall Street Journal article notes the unusually cold storage temperatures – as low as -80?C – required. Covid-19 vaccine candidates are one of many applications for ultra-low freezers. This post provides you with info on when and how to specify one of these units
C4Diagnostics, Bertin Technologies, and Enalees announce the launch of their clinical trial of BEC-SARS-CoV-2 for humans, a diagnostic test for Covid-19, developed jointly with Pasteur Institute. The BEC-SARS-CoV-2 for humans test has been submitted to the authorities in accordance with French regulations, the detection process has been validated and a clinical trial has been launched by the consortium in order to obtain CE-IVD marking by the end of September...
Beckman Coulter has announced that it has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its Access Interleukin-6 (IL-6) assay from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Access IL-6 is a fully automated immunoassay designed to detect IL-6 levels in serum and plasma which can be used to aid physicians identifying a severe inflammatory response and determining the risk of intubation with mechanical ventilation in COVID-19 patients...
Avacta Group plc, the developer of innovative cancer therapies and diagnostics based on its proprietary Affimer® and pre|CISION™ platforms, is pleased to announce that the BAMS™ assay to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been launched as a research kit by its partner Adeptrix (Beverly, MA, USA) and the assay has been presented by Bruker Scientific (Billerica, MA, USA), a leading mass spectrometer manufacturer, in a new application note...
EKF Diagnostics, the global in vitro diagnostics company, announces that the novel viral transport media PrimeStore® MTM (Molecular Transport Medium) has been successfully evaluated for effective SARS-CoV-2 inactivation in a new study published by Public Health England (PHE). To work safely with live SARS-CoV-2 samples requires the use of high-containment laboratories....
The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most urgent infectious disease challenges the world has faced in recent history. Presently, few treatment options exist, therefore, the need to evaluate neutralizing antibodies to fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus is at an all-time high. Current screening methods to identify circulating SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies including the plaque reduction neutralization assay and other live virus cell based tests are inefficient and can require multiple days to complete.,,,
The COVID-19 crisis has led to unparalleled pressure on labs to ramp up capacity for SARS-CoV-2 testing. INTEGRA’s electronic pipettes, pipetting robots and other instruments have helped many labs tackle this challenge of increasing testing capacity while, at the same time, enhancing the reproducibility of results. VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipettes are ideal for transferring patient samples from individual collection tubes – either blood collection or swab tubes – to microplates in serological and PCR testing workflows...
Gilson has developed a compact, low-cost tube filling system that has the flexibility to fill bottles, tubes, vials, or microplates quickly. With the current pandemic, there is an exponential demand for diagnostic testing of patients for COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Viral transport media (VTM) is a critical component of COVID-19 test kits and is used for the collection, transport, and storage of clinical specimens....
Cytel Inc. has significantly widened the geographical scope of the TOGETHER trial, a unique study to identify early COVID-19 interventions in underserved low- and middle-income country (LMIC) populations. The trial, supported with seed funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is one of the very few studies investigating therapies at the earliest stages of COVID-19 infection, and is the only trial to explore early interventions in the Global South....
SP Industries, Inc. (SP), has hosted a visit by US Congressman, Brian Fitzpatrick, who was on a fact-finding mission to find out more about the work SP is doing to support Operation Warp Speed, and discuss SP’s plans for increasing capacity and capabilities. Operation Warp Speed (OWS), an initiative of the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), aims to...
National charity Heart Research UK has launched a new grant of up to £250,000 for research projects investigating the relationship between COVID-19 and heart disease. People with existing cardiovascular disease have a higher risk of severe complications from Covid-19 infection, and evidence is emerging that the virus can cause damage to the heart....
Relation Therapeutics, a drug development company driven by data science and machine learning (ML), announces Project RE, which will apply Relation Therapeutics’ and its partners’ technologyto the identification of repurposed drug combinations as potential therapeutic candidates for COVID-19....
Paradigm4, specialist in scientific data management and scalable computation, has launched its REVEAL: Single CellTM app to offer biopharmaceutical developers the ability to break through the data wrangling and programming challenges associated with the analysis of large-scale, single-cell datasets...
Illumina has announced that the Australian public health laboratories will aim to sequence the virus genomes of all positive COVID-19 tests in Australia and track COVID-19 using genomics across the country, rather than state by state, under a ground-breaking initiative spearheaded by Australia’s public health laboratory organisations and leading industry partners...
Bernie Benson, founder of Benson Viscometers, and explains more about the use of blood viscometers in helping to guide the treatment of Covid-19 patients. One of the biggest challenges facing medical teams treating Covid-19 patients is identifying which ones are likely to suffer the most extreme responses to the virus....
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has agreed to lend up to EUR 10 million to Scope Fluidics, a Polish medical technology company developing innovative products in the field of medical diagnostics. Scope Fluidics uses microfluidic technologies (involving the manipulation of small quantities of test samples within a disposable diagnostic cartridge) and focuses on rapid characterization of antibiotic resistance of bacteria and on ultra-fast detection of bacterial and viral pathogens (including COVID-19)....