![]() ![]() Four of the technologies introduce innovations in laboratory-based testing technologies including next generation sequencing, CRISPR and integrated microfluidic chips that could dramatically increase testing capacity and throughput while reducing the time to receive test results. ![]() The seven technologies use different methods and formats and can be performed in a variety of settings to meet diverse needs, according to a news release from NIH. NIH announced July 31 that it is investing $248.7 million in new technologies from seven biomedical diagnostic companies, identified through RADx, to address challenges associated with COVID-19 testing. UMMS alone is already administering 14 of these grants. More than 600 companies have completed applications and the project team is supporting about 30 companies through grants already in different phases of development. “We need to get to a place where you get up in the morning, you’re going about your day, you brush your teeth, you’re getting your saliva sample or nasal swab, and then you run your test in your home every day to determine if you have COVID,” McManus said. Food and Drug Administration and local research site teams. Studies are designed and vetted with the NIH, U.S. ![]() Laura Gibson, MD, associate professor of medicine, co-leads the RADx Tech Clinical Studies Core, within which the studies testing novel POC diagnostic devices in the U.S. UMMS’s two major RADx grants, under the program component known as RADx Tech, include collaborating with Massachusetts General Hospital to review companies’ proposals and coordinating clinical studies and development with partners at University of California San Francisco, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University and Northwestern University. McManus said he was one of the “sharks” that reviews proposals and oversees administrative, scientific and strategic development among projects. The goal is to expand diagnostic testing capacity for COVID-19 in the United States to about 6 million tests per day by December, a huge leap from current testing capacity of about 1 million tests per day, according to a blog post by NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, who co-authored an editorial about the project in The New England Journal of Medicine on July 22.īroadly, RADx works like the TV show, “Shark Tank,” to identify and support promising technologies that will get more people tested more easily for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. The RADx initiative was launched in late April by NIH, in partnership with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the Department of Defense, and is supported by a portion of $1.5 billion in federal stimulus funding. Collins said rapid, convenient, affordable testing could “change the course of the pandemic.” “That experience is why NIH asked us to help with this COVID issue and so we stepped up.”Ĭhancellor Michael F. “That center has for years been conducting national searches for small businesses, evaluating them, investing in them and helping them with clinical studies,” said David McManus, MD, professor of medicine at UMMS, co-director of CAPCaT and co-principal investigator for RADx with Bryan Buchholz, PhD, chairman and professor of biomedical engineering at UMass Lowell. UMMS has already distinguished itself as an incubator for innovative point-of-care (POC) medical technology, which provides clinical information at the site where the patient is, through the Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies, or CAPCaT, a partnership between the Medical School and UMass Lowell. UMass Medical School has been awarded grants totaling more than $100 million to coordinate the nationwide push for fast, accessible COVID-19 testing, playing a major role in the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics, or RADx, program. ![]()
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