“ROSALIND®, a software leader in extracting meaningful insights from diverse pools of life science data, today announced the launch of a web-based platform for monitoring the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants and evaluating the effects on the performance of diagnostic tests. The new platform, called the ROSALIND Diagnostic Monitoring (DxM) system, is available starting today and will be used by diagnostic test manufacturers and regulators to monitor assay performance against the rapidly evolving SARS-CoV-2 variants.”
“With the rapid emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants, global awareness has led to rising concern over the detection of new viral strains using the existing diagnostic assays. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an alert in January that false negative results may occur with any molecular test for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 if a mutation occurs in the part of the virus’ genome assessed by that test. The agency, urged test makers to perform periodic in silico assessment (computer simulations) of molecular tests to identify impacts on performance.”
“ROSALIND developed the DxM system with support from the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADxSM) Tech program, part of the National Institutes of Health’s RADx initiative launched in April 2020 to speed innovation in the development, commercialization, and implementation of technologies for COVID-19 testing. Recognizing the importance of a centralized bioinformatics system, RADx Tech issued a request for proposals to develop and implement a bioinformatics pipeline with a user-friendly web-based interface that would provide regular updates of the frequency of the variants, mapping/alignment of the probe/detection sequences of the NIH RADx projects and to assess the effect of the variants on the performance of the tests. ROSALIND was awarded the contract in late February 2021 and today released the first version of the new platform…” Read the full press release here.
Source: In the News: New Covid-19 Variant Monitor System – By Tim Wesselman, March 23, 2021. ROSALIND.
