The FDA said that pooled testing of donations using a screening test that it has licensed is a sufficient method for complying with its testing regulations.
Despite the astronomical costs, it may prove challenging to reverse course and discontinue Zika testing according to a commentary article accompanying a NEJM study.
The technology behind Mammoth's platform bears a striking resemblance to the CRISPR-based SHERLOCK platform developed by researchers at the Broad Institute.
The CDC says that the number of people in the US who have been infected with diseases carried by mosquitoes, ticks, and flea bites have more than tripled in recent years.
The team paired the SHERLOCK platform developed in Feng Zhang's lab with a protocol that detects viruses directly from bodily fluids in less than two hours.
The latest version of the nucleic acid detection platform uses three CRISPR enzymes, making it more sensitive and capable of smaller quantitative measurements.
The researchers built a combination nucleic acid-antibody test for the disease using an approach they said could be generally useful for rapid test development.
