Agena Bioscience – a developer of low-cost, high-throughput molecular testing solutions – announced the launch of the MassARRAY SARS-CoV-2 Variant Panel for the detection of key SARS-CoV-2 virus strains, including the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7), South Africa (B.1.351), Brazil (P.1) and Denmark (Cluster 5) variants, according to a news release.
The test is available for research use only (RUO).
The company said the cost of the test is $25 per sample and that a single MassARRAY instrument can process thousands of tests per day.
“Most surveillance methods rely on sequencing-based technologies, which have inherent limitations - cost, time-to-result, limit of detection, and high-complexity - that make them impractical for known variant screening,” said Darryl Irwin, PhD, Vice President of Scientific Affairs at Agena Bioscience. “A more effective approach is to divide testing between the MassARRAY System for monitoring existing, known variants and sequencing to discover new variants. This will allow for a more scalable and effective expansion of variant surveillance programs, while increasing the efficiency of sequencing-based new variant discovery.”
