CAP TODAY Pathology/Laboratory Medicine/Laboratory Management
April 13, 2021—Promega Corp. released its XpressAmp Direct Amplification Reagents. The product contains components for performing extraction-free preparation of viral samples for PCR-based amplification using commonly available PCR reagents from samples collected by nasopharyngeal swab in universal or viral transport medium. The reagents allow the user to perform direct amplification analysis in RT-qPCR following a 10-minute, room-temperature incubation. With this innovation, the company says, laboratories testing for COVID-19 have a tool that enables them to skip the potentially bottlenecked RNA extraction step and move directly to PCR amplification.