Last week, we asked the genomics community how they were shifting their focus to help fight the novel coronavirus. We built this resource to show how genomics is leading the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. To say our email inbox was flooded is an understatement, many companies are shifting their focus to help!
A summary of what we found is below, please note that this list is not exhaustive, just what we are aware of.
P.s. We’re aware that genomics companies are facing a range of challenges, including keeping their business afloat. If you’re doing something to support the battle against COVID-19, great. If your contribution is to keep your business going and support non-COVID-19 work (e.g. oncology), then brilliant too.
Asked customers to consent to use their data to study the genetic factors of severity.
Working towards accelerating testing.
Check out the media room for the most recent coverage.
Sourcing third-party data to help academics, researchers and the healthcare community triage COVID-19 related issues. Making these data sets freely available.
Has asked its users to make their consumer genomics database available for COVID-19 research project.
Developed an Armored RNA Quant SARS CoV-2 control for use in developing assays in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Atos Ai experts are taking part in a global challenge to study COVID-19 behaviour. Have also been commissioned by the City of Vienne to develop and implement an Epidemic Management System (EMS) to support the control of the spread of infectious diseases.
Developing tests to detect coronavirus antibodies.
Providing its ‘Huo Yan’ laboratory solution for rapid detection and diagnosis of patients suspected with COVID-19 to partners around the world. Has also trebled the daily production capacity of its RT-PCR test for Coronavirus to 2 million per day. Supporting 80+ countries with detection efforts.
BigOmics Analytics
Have launched a free-to-use Viromics Playground, a special edition platform allowing researchers to visualize and interpret omics data sets from various viral infections. The platform has more than 200 public data sets ready for analysis including some very recent SARS-CoV2 data sets.
Partnering with diagnostic companies to ensure their Mic platform can be used reliably in the fight against COVID-19.
Biomax Informatics
Taking part in the PREPARE project to help prepare for future epidemics. They are also releasing a semantic search platform specifically for COVID-19.
Bionano Genomics
Supporting a large study on COVID-19 disease susceptibility.
Bios-IT
Promoting supercomputing efforts to support COVID-19 research via Standford University’s Folding@home software.
Blue Pelican Pharma (Recruiter)
Providing a free service up to and including a complimentary hire for any company who has COVID-19 combatting projects in progress. A discount thereafter.
Developing new diagnostics/testing technologies, data analysis tools and generating new biological insights.
Prepared an overview of how their solutions across the Sample Management Lifecycle can ease desk research for people carrying our R&D into COVID-19.
Providing sample collection kits for upper respiratory tract specimens, plus a guide for healthcare organization on which kinds of swabs can/should be used.
Launched a Global COVID-19 clinical trial tracker.
Scientists from both companies working together to ensure Diversigen’s viral metagenomics capabilities can be leveraged to help during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Providing a range of services for researchers studying the virus and the COVID-19 disease. They are collaborating with the European Commission to sustain some of the infrastructure solutions that emerge in the long term. This is critical in managing and processing pathogen data when needed.
Launched a COVID-19 Data Portal for the sharing and analysis of COVID 19 Data.
Made available a variety of articles and downloadable tools to help laboratories work safer and minimize the risk of contamination.
Launched serologic products for the detection of antibodies in patients exposed to the virus among other projects.
Teaming up with researchers around the world to help mount an aggressive and sustainable response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Collaborating with researchers to support the battle against COVID-19.
GE Healthcare
Developed free COVID-19 educational response materials and guidelines to help patients and healthcare organizations.
Genetic Center Regina Maria
Laboratories are involved in COVID-19 genetic diagnostics and soon testing for antibodies
Genomics England
Some of the team have been called back to front line care within the NGS, others supporting research efforts to tackle the virus. Also supporting their participants – particularly those at a higher risk.
Genomics Medicine Ireland
Provide free genomic sequencing services to scientists in Ireland participating in International COVID-19 Research
Genscript
Released a webinar on a detection method for COVID-19 and vaccine development progress. Also collaborating with Mount Sinai researchers to develop a COVID-19 antibody to treat sick patients.
Consolidated their tools, technology services and resources that could be used to support the scientific community against Coronavirus.
Supporting with academic research, healthcare organization, cybersecurity and keeping increasingly stretched systems up and running.
Developed automated coronavirus testing workstations.
Released guidance and information notes for health professionals.
Sharing resources, including supercomputing power, virus tracking and AI assistant to answer citizen’s questions. Giving researchers free access to 400 petaflops of computing capacity.
Helping in a variety of ways e.g. XPRIZE for solutions to pandemic threats, working in collaboration with Adaptive Biotechnologies and Microsoft, sequencing the first COVID-19 genome, and characterizing Cambodian COVID-19. Additionally, they have announced that they are supporting customers engaged in COVID-19 projects by providing a matched funding on relevant sequencing consumables.
Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT)
Priority shipping for related products, ramping up production of primer and probe kits to enable 30 million tests to be conducted.
Grants free access to IP to COVID-19 researchers and scientists. Commits $50million with pandemic response technology initiatives to combat coronavirus. They have also donated protective items for healthcare workers.
L7 Informatics
Partnered with Contamination Source Identification (CSI) for rapid implementation of COVID- 19 patient screening.
Macrogen
Released a study on Whole Genome Sequencing of coronavirus, in partnership with Seoul National University Hospital. They were also the first to identify 9 mutations in the virus.
Menarini Silicon Biosystems
Exploring a new application of Circulating Endothelial Cells in COVID-19 (Liquid Biopsy) to study disease progression.
MGI
Providing equipment and materials to enable testing in France. Initiating scientific collaborations across Europe to support research based on the DNBSEQ platform. Also running a project GIOG-S open resource for the genetic data of COVID-19.
My Gene Counsel
My Gene Counsel is partnering with entities offering testing to return results (+,-, antibodies) on their digital platform and provide updates, notifications, and collect outcome data.
New England Biolabs
Supplying and supporting customers who are working to build better diagnostic tools and vaccines, and ready to supply additional customers with reagents they need.
Ramped up production of the Mag-Bind Viral DNA/RNA 96 kit, to a capacity to support 1 million patient tests per month. They are also supporting several Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs) by providing nucleic acid extraction methodologies, plus other related activities.
Opentrons
Developed a COVID-19 Testing System to support population-scale testing for COVID-19
Rapid sequencing of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus and characterization approaches. Also supporting the sharing of rapid genomic data. Also supporting the development and sharing of best practice and protocols for virus sequencing. The virus can be sequenced in 7 hours using its technology.
Pacific Biosciences
Helping partners use their technology to resolve variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, educating the market on why long read is useful.
Also released a press release of how customers are using their products to fight COVID-19 in academic and government labs.
Deploying all necessary resources to meet the urgent needs of customers for products (reagents) supporting the detection of COVID-19.
FDA provided emergency authorization for Perkin Elmer for COVID-19 testing. They also developed a new RT-PCR test.
Developing a potential coronavirus treatment and vaccine candidate (engaged with BioNTech).
Have included the current ASM985889v3 RefSeq into their GensearchNGS software package to analyse NGS data of the virus. They have also committed to provide free of charge one year licenses to any laboratory, private or public, wishing to analyse SARS-CoV2 or other related coronaviruses in this fight against COVID-19 and will provide support to these labs as far as possible during these difficult times.
Interested labs can contact them for information and access to the free licence.
Offering analytics and resource support to the COVID-19 coronavirus research community. Free use of its platform.
Supporting lab scientists with technical support and expertise in relevant genomics-related technologies for research labs studying coronavirus.
Developed a QIAstat-Dx Respiratory 2019-nCoV Panel to detect and differentiate between 22 different respiratory targets, including SARS-CoV-2, from swabs.
Developed a new serology test to detect antibodies.
Sophia Genetics & Paragon Genomics
Combining forces, using Paragon’s NGS expertise and Sophia’s data analysis capabilities for hospitals around the world.
Providing a COVID-19 testing service from their labs in Nottingham.
Ramped up support on helping users understand how to use their technology for COVID-19 research.
Have launched a collaboration for a ready-to-go processing solution to streamline DNA/RNA extraction from testing swabs.
Supporting clinical trials, needs, contract development and manufacturing needs of pharma and biotech, providing research solutions (including NGS)
Developed NGS panels for virus detection and characterization, as well as synthetic SARS-CoV-2 RNA Controls. In general, provide products for virus testing and sequencing.
Conducting genomics observational studies, clinical trials and basic science genomics research on CTSL and ACE2. Collaborating with the University of Washington Medicine to study the role of genetic variation in COVID-19 infection and disease progression.
Launched the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium with partners.
Developed an antibody test that has been verified by Belgian authorities.
