Center news

Webinar: The Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Variants and Effects on Viral Detection Tests: Creation of the Variant Task Force Genotyping Assay

Webinar: The Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Variants and Effects on Viral Detection Tests

On February 25, 2022, The RADx initiative created a Variant Task Force (VTF) to assess the impact of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants on diagnostic testing.


The NIH’s RADx initiative created a Variant Task Force (VTF) in January 2021 to assess the impact of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants on in vitro diagnostic testing. In July 2021, the RADx VTF initiated an effort to develop a SARS-CoV-2 Polymerase Chain Reaction assay for variant agnostic detection of SARS-CoV-2, as well as early detection and monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 variants.

The aims of this project were to:

  1. Identify SARS-CoV-2 markers useful for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 positive samples across all variants
  2. Develop a panel of SNP markers that can be used to accurately assign lineages to SARS-CoV-2 positive samples
  3. Implement a genotyping approach for the early detection of new and re-emerging variants that signals when markers need to be updated.

Speakers

Richard S. Creager, PhD 
RADx Team Leader

Eric Lai, PhD 
RADx Team Leader

When: 

February 15, 2022, 2PM ET

Watch the webinar >