NEW YORK – Zymo Research has partnered with Tecan to launch a ready-to-go product to streamline viral DNA/RNA extraction from nasopharyngeal swasbs, oropharyngeal swabs, saliva, sputum, plasma, and serum.
The partners will use Tecan's DreamPrep NAP workstation, featuring Zymo's Quick-DNA/RNA Viral MagBead Kit, to simplify the process by offering pre-loaded scripts — optimized for viral RNA extraction — that are being validated for COVID-19 assays by high complexity testing labs.
Zymo, based in Irvine, California, said that the DreamPrep NAP workstation from Switzerland-based Tecan will help labs rapidly scale their testing to offer a larger number of coronavirus tests.
"We understand the need to rapidly respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and have dramatically increased our supply of the Quick-DNA/RNA Viral MagBead extraction kits," Ryan Kemp, director of nucleic acid solutions at Zymo, said in a statement. "We have [also] expanded our team of technical experts to help with the global effort."
Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
"By combining [Zymo's] optimized extraction kits with our easy-to-use liquid handling platform, we have delivered a complete viral processing solution with the DreamPrep NAP workstation," Beatrice Marg-Haufe, product manager at Tecan, said in a statement.