Technical notes

We offer The BioFire® FilmArray® Gastrointestinal (GI) Panel in our New York State CLIA laboratory in Brooklyn, NY. You can read more about this test on the BioFire website.The FilmArray GI is a multiplexed nucleic acid test intended for use with the FilmArray Instrument for the simultaneous qualitative detection and identification of nucleic acids from multiple bacteria, viruses, and parasites directly from stool samples in Cary Blair transport media obtained from individuals with signs and/or symptoms of gastrointestinal infection.

We offer respiratory testing for common infections including COVID-19 using the FDA-approved BioFire® RP2.1 Panel with SARS-CoV-2 at our NYS CLIA Laboratory. You can read more about this test on the BioFire website.The BioFire RP2.1 is a multiplexed nucleic acid test intended for the simultaneous qualitative detection and differentiation of nucleic acids from multiple viral and bacterial respiratory organisms, including nucleic acids from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Our ability to intercept and combat new pandemic strains is contingent on robust and accurate technologies for viral genome sequencing. A common method for viral genome sequencing employs the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This method is not robust over time when dealing with a rapidly mutating organism, as mutations can accumulate in amplicon primer binding regions, leading to drop-outs. Here we show that target capture sequencing is a robust alternative for pandemic strain surveillance that does not present dropouts in rapidly mutating strains.

SARS-CoV-2 surveillance efforts are facilitated by technologies that extract the viral genome from the patient sample background. Effective surveillance tools should be able to detect variants that have deviated from the original virus strain. The SARS-CoV-2 NGS Assay—RUO is a hybridization capture-based assay featuring the Twist SARS-CoV-2 Research Panel and Biotia COVID-DX (v1.6) software. Here, we highlight the ability of this assay to detect the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant in clinical samples, which emerged over a year after the panel’s design.