NIH awards contracts to develop new testing technologies

The National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative Friday awarded $248.7 million in contracts to produce four new laboratory tests and three new point-of-care tests to detect SARS-CoV-2.

The recipients have received or applied for emergency use authorizations from the Food and Drug Administration for the tests, which use new technologies such as next generation sequencing, CRISPR and integrated microfluidic chips that could increase testing capacity and speed results. 

“RADx moved incredibly quickly to select promising technologies through its ‘shark tank’ approach, investing in technologies that could boost America’s best-in-the-world COVID-19 testing capacity by millions more tests per day,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. “These technologies will help deliver faster results from labs and more and more test results within minutes at the point of care, which is especially important for settings like schools and nursing homes.”