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Abbott Laboratories is an American multinational medical devices and health care company with headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, United States. The company was founded by Chicago physician Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 to formulate known drugs; today, it sells medical devices, diagnostics, branded generic medicines and nutritional products. It split off its research-based pharmaceuticals business into AbbVie in 2013.
Lateral flow tests (LFTs), also known as lateral flow immunochromatographic assays or rapid tests, are simple devices intended to detect the presence of a target substance in a liquid sample without the need for specialized and costly equipment. These tests are widely used in medical diagnostics for home testing, point of care testing, or laboratory use. For instance, the home pregnancy test is an LFT that detects a specific hormone. These tests are simple, economic and generally show results in around five to 30 minutes. Many lab-based applications increase the sensitivity of simple LFTs by employing additional dedicated equipment.
Randox is an international health and toxicology company in the in vitro diagnostics industry headquartered in the UK, and owned by Peter FitzGerald. The company develops diagnostic solutions for hospitals, clinical, research and molecular labs, food testing, forensic toxicology, veterinary labs and life sciences. It develops, manufactures and markets reagents and equipment for laboratory medicine, with a distribution network of 145 countries. Randox is the biggest polymerase chain reaction testing provider in the UK and Ireland. Randox received three contracts by the Department of Health and Social Care without having to compete for a tender.
InBios International, Inc. is a medical diagnostic company based in Seattle that specializes in the design, development, and manufacture of immunodiagnostic devices for infectious diseases. The company was founded in 1996 and, since its inception, has developed several technologies useful in designing rapid and ELISA based immunodiagnostic assays. InBios offers a number of life science reagents, along with a portfolio of more than 25 diagnostic products, including FDA Emergency Use Authorization for COVID-19 products and FDA-cleared ELISA kits for Zika, dengue, and West Nile and rapid test kits for Chagas and leishmaniasis. InBios is GMP compliant, FDA registered, USDA licensed and ISO 13485:2016 certified.
DiaSorin is an Italian multinational biotechnology company that produces and markets in vitro diagnostics reagent kits used in immunodiagnostics and molecular diagnostics and since July 2021, it is also active in the Life Science business. The group was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Saluggia, Italy. Its production is at several plants located in Europe and the United States: Saluggia and Gerenzano (Italy), Dietzenbach (Germany), Stillwater, Minnesota (US), Dartford (UK). Following the acquisition of Luminex, the Company acquired five additional production plants located in the USA and in Canada (Toronto). The company is a constituent of the FTSE MIB index.
A rapid antigen test (RAT), sometimes called a rapid antigen detection test (RADT), antigen rapid test (ART), or often even just a rapid test, is a rapid diagnostic test suitable for point-of-care testing that directly detects the presence or absence of an antigen. It has been commonly used for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Rapid tests are a type of lateral flow tests that detect antigens, distinguishing it from other medical tests that detect antibodies or nucleic acid, of either laboratory or point-of-care types. Rapid tests generally give a result in 5 to 30 minutes, require minimal training or infrastructure, and have significant cost advantages.
COVID-19 testing involves analyzing samples to assess the current or past presence of SARS-CoV-2. The two main branches detect either the presence of the virus or of antibodies produced in response to infection. Molecular tests for viral presence through its molecular components are used to diagnose individual cases and to allow public health authorities to trace and contain outbreaks. Antibody tests instead show whether someone once had the disease. They are less useful for diagnosing current infections because antibodies may not develop for weeks after infection. It is used to assess disease prevalence, which aids the estimation of the infection fatality rate.
COVID-19 drug development is the research process to develop preventative therapeutic prescription drugs that would alleviate the severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). From early 2020 through 2021, several hundred drug companies, biotechnology firms, university research groups, and health organizations were developing therapeutic candidates for COVID-19 disease in various stages of preclinical or clinical research, with 419 potential COVID-19 drugs in clinical trials, as of April 2021.
The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, or the Global Collaboration to Accelerate the Development, Production and Equitable Access to New COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, is a G20 initiative announced by pro-tem Chair Mohammed al-Jadaan on 24 April 2020. A call to action was published simultaneously by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 24 April.
Casirivimab/imdevimab, sold under the brand name REGEN-COV among others, is a combination medicine used for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. It consists of two human monoclonal antibodies, casirivimab and imdevimab that must be mixed together and administered as an infusion or subcutaneous injection. The combination of two antibodies is intended to prevent mutational escape. It is also available as a co-formulated product. It was developed by the American biotechnology company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
Abingdon Health is a British manufacturer of lateral flow assay diagnostic tests, sometimes called rapid tests, lateral flow immunoassays (LFIA), lateral flow tests (LFT) or quick tests. Since its formation in 2008, Abingdon Health has grown to become an organisation of over 200 people and has developed and manufactured lateral flow rapid tests across multiple industries.
The AbC-19 rapid antibody test is an immunological test for COVID-19 exposure developed by the UK Rapid Test Consortium and manufactured by Abingdon Health. It uses a lateral flow test to determine whether a person has IgG antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The test uses a single drop of blood obtained from a finger prick and yields results in 20 minutes. The sensitivity of this test is 98.03% while the specificity is 99.56%. This test is paired with an easy-to-use mobile app which allows a trained professional to generate an antibody test certificate for storing on a person's smartphone.
V451 was a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by the University of Queensland and the Australian pharmaceutical company CSL Limited. The vaccine candidate used the University of Queensland's molecular clamp technology and the MF59 adjuvant.
CIGA Healthcare is a British manufacturer of lateral flow assay diagnostic tests. It is under contract to the British government for the supply of AbC-19 rapid antibody tests, a test for the presence of IgG antibody against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, as part of the UK Rapid Test Consortium program.
The COVID-19 vaccination programme in the United Kingdom is an ongoing mass immunisation campaign for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. As of 6 October 2021, 49,068,705 first doses and 45,078,529 second doses of a vaccine had been administered across the UK.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was isolated in late 2019. Its genetic sequence was published on 11 January 2020, triggering the urgent international response to prepare for an outbreak and hasten development of a preventive COVID-19 vaccine. Since 2020, vaccine development has been expedited via unprecedented collaboration in the multinational pharmaceutical industry and between governments. By June 2020, tens of billions of dollars were invested by corporations, governments, international health organizations, and university research groups to develop dozens of vaccine candidates and prepare for global vaccination programs to immunize against COVID‑19 infection. According to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the geographic distribution of COVID‑19 vaccine development shows North American entities to have about 40% of the activity, compared to 30% in Asia and Australia, 26% in Europe, and a few projects in South America and Africa.
The term variant of concern (VOC) for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is a category used for variants of the virus where mutations in their spike protein receptor binding domain (RBD) substantially increase binding affinity in RBD-hACE2 complex, while also being linked to rapid spread in human populations.
The development of COVID-19 tests was a major public health priority during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 rapid antigen tests, also frequently called COVID-19 lateral flow tests or LFTs, are rapid antigen tests used to detect SARS-COV-2 infection (COVID-19). They are quick to implement with minimal training, and offer significant cost advantages, costing a fraction of other forms of COVID-19 testing and give users a result within 5–30 minutes. Rapid antigen tests are used in several countries as part of mass testing or population-wide screening approaches. They are thought to be valuable for identifying individuals who are asymptomatic and could potentially spread the virus to other people, who would otherwise not know they were infected. This differs from other forms of COVID-19 testing, such as PCR, that are generally seen to be a useful test for symptomatic individuals, as they have a higher sensitivity and can more accurately identify cases.
The United Kingdom's response to the COVID-19 pandemic with consists of various measures by the national health services community; the British and devolved governments; the military; and the research sector.
References
- ↑ "rapidmicrobiology UK Begin At-Home COVID-19 Antibody Testing Programme". www.rapidmicrobiology.com. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
- 1 2 "Industry responds to call to arms to build British diagnostics industry at scale". GOV.UK. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
- ↑ "Government invests in UK-developed antibody tests from UK Rapid Test Consortium". GOV.UK. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
- ↑ "Yorkshire developed Covid-19 test approved for use in North America".
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