A new testing method for COVID-19 has been invested?

The year 2022 is already the third year of the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, with confirmed cases reaching 584,065,952 and more than 6,418,958 confirmed deaths as of August 10, 2022. In order to reduce the rate of COVID-19 transmission and reduce the number of people infected, an accurate and effective detection strategy is necessary. This means that reducing testing time and increasing sample throughput is the key.

The University of Birmingham has developed a new COVID-19 detection method, the reverse transcription-free exponential amplification reaction, RTF-EXPAR. The new technique can be completed in as little as 10 minutes.

The current gold standard for COVID-19 detection is PCR. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a method widely used to rapidly make millions to billions of copies (complete or partial) of a specific DNA sample, allowing scientists to detect and analyze the DNA in a single sample. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a method widely used to rapidly make millions to billions of copies (complete or partial) of a specific DNA sample, allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplify it (or a part of it) to a large enough amount to study in detail.?

The PCR technique detects DNA, but the SARS-CoV-2 genome is RNA, so it needs to be converted to DNA using reverse transcription (RT) before amplification. RTF-EXPAR technology can bypass the lengthy RT step and achieve a faster amplification process than PCR, resulting in faster test results. This method can eventually be applied to any RNA-based assay as well.

The University of Birmingham eventually licensed the commercial rights to this novel technology to Innova Medical Group, a provider of COVID-19 tests.

We sincerely hope that this technology will soon be rolled out worldwide and that people's lives will be returned to normal.?