QIAGEN adds dPCR platform QIAcuity to growing portfolio of COVID-19 testing solutions

QIAGEN has announced the addition of kits for wastewater testing to its growing portfolio of COVID-19 products. The use of dPCR in the worldwide surveillance of COVID-19 is an additional step towards making digital PCR (dPCR) an affordable and standard instrument for a host of applications in molecular-testing laboratories worldwide.

The new kits are designed for use on the uniquely fast and easy-to-use series of QIAcuity instruments based on digital polymerase chain reaction (dPCR) technology. QIAcuity precisely quantifies even minimal quantities of DNA and RNA in research tests for viruses, bacteria or genetic disorders, including the rarest of cancer mutations.

The precision of QIAcuity provides a valuable tool for use in testing wastewater for SARS-CoV-2. The application offers a cost-effective way to survey transmission dynamics of entire communities, avoiding the biases of other epidemiological indicators like deaths as a proportion of known cases or of the total population.

"In a trial run with the new high-throughput QIAcuity Eight, we were able to successfully detect new variants of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater samples," said Dr. Franz Durandet, President of I.A.G.E. in Montpellier, France. "Our tests have proven that this fast and scalable technology from QIAGEN can provide a valuable addition to our environmental biological testing services, which we will offer to our clients in the near future."

COVID-19 surveillance through wastewater testing allows public authorities to collect data from broad sweeps of the population, including people who do not feature in public-health statistics because they lack access to healthcare. Potentially, surveillance testing can reveal infection and mutation dynamics earlier than diagnostic testing, providing public-health officials with near-real-time information on disease prevalence.

“We are proud that QIAcuity is proving its worth to customers as a cost-effective, highly reliable way to gain faster, easier access to digital PCR,” said Thomas Schweins, Senior Vice President, Head of the Life Science Business Area at QIAGEN. “We are seeing strong demand for QIAcuity from life-sciences laboratories in a wide range of fields. Our aim is eventually to create a clinical dPCR platform that will extend this powerful technology to every research and clinical lab worldwide. Our view is that about half of all traditional PCR applications could move to dPCR in the longer term.”

QIAcuity harnesses the greater accuracy of digital PCR over traditional quantitative real-time PCR while taking a quantum leap over the cumbersome methods of existing dPCR devices. QIAcuity uses nanoplate technology to disperse a sample over thousands of partitions and then simultaneously read the reaction in each one. Samples can be prepared and analyzed in two hours rather than six.

QIAcuity is available in three versions – the QIAcuity One (one plate), Four (four plates) and Eight (eight plates). Key features and benefits include fully automated workflow with a flexible sample throughput, a scalable format of one-, four- and eight-plate instruments, and the ability to simultaneously detect up to five target sequences. This allows the largest machine, QIAcuity Eight, to process up to 1,248 samples in one working day.

QIAGEN is the only company to offer fast single-plex and multiplex PCR tests as well as a fast syndromic solution (QIAstat-Dx), providing a broad variety of PCR-based testing options. Its portfolio includes RNA extraction kits and instruments, and testing components and enzymes used by third parties for their PCR test kits. In August 2020, it also launched the QIAseq SARS-CoV-2 Primer Panel to help coronavirus researchers convert viral RNA samples into so-called libraries ready for decoding using high-throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) on Illumina platforms. The QIAcuity One-Step Viral RT-PCR Kit opens up digital PCR for COVID-19 testing applications as well.

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