With a €930,000 from Horizon 2020, the firm is conducting additional stories to evaluate other uses for the test, including using new specimen types and patient cohorts.
British bioinformatics firm PrecisionLife has mined the UK Biobank to identify genetic risk factors for late-stage COVID-19 patients developing sepsis.
A professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, Gregory Tsongalis has published a paper detailing his lab's work on SARS-CoV-2 testing and the challenges faced.
Low levels of lymphocytes appeared to predict disease severity among a cohort of more than 300 COVID-19 patients, while viral genetic differences did not.
The test does not require thermal cycling and uses a colorimetric readout, making it more amenable to high-throughput automation and rapid scale-up, the company said.
The companies are making three COVID-19 tools available immediately for early access, with plans to add other nCounter software and potentially develop new products.
The firm said it will use the funds for general corporate purposes, which may include investment and acquisitions, working capital, and debt repayment.
The companies collaborated in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak, using Darui's pathogenic microorganism detection kits on Genetron's next-generation sequencer.
French startup SeqOne has adapted its sequencing data-analysis platform to support a new method for high-throughput processing of coronavirus tests in its home country.
A handful of recently published trials suggest that use of the pneumonia panel could lead to more targeted therapy delivered more quickly than standard methods.
The firm also received the CE mark for the test, which uses a reformulated buffer and takes less time to process than a test requiring an RNA extraction step.
