Impact Series: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Testing, Next Steps, and the Role of Small Business

Public health officials have argued that thorough and accurate testing for SARS-CoV-2 is essential for gaining a foothold in the fight against the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. To date, however, a lack of reliable testing in the United States has hampered efforts to achieve a thorough understanding of the disease's abundance and spread. In this episode of BioScience Talks, we are joined by Dr. Crystal Icenhour, CEO of Aperiomics, and Dr. Robbie Barbero, Chief Business Officer of Ceres Nanosciences. Both companies have recently ramped up efforts to improve the prospects of broad-scale testing for the novel pathogen in human patients. Aperiomics, whose core technology uses deep shotgun metagenomic sequencing to test for tens of thousands of bacteria, virus, fungus, and parasite at once, has launched a SARS-CoV-2-specific test, with the aims of increasing test availability and delivering crucially important public health data. Ceres Nanosciences's flagship Nanotrap particle technology enables the capture, concentration, and preservation of low abundance analytes from complex biological samples. The technology is presently being tested with the SARS-CoV-2 and is expected to help in improving the accuracy of existing testing protocols. Image credit: NIAID-RML, CC BY 2.0. Learn more about Ceres Nanosciences. Learn more about Aperiomics. Listen to Dr. Icenhour's earlier appearance. Subscribe on iTunes. Subscribe on Stitcher. Catch up with us on Twitter.