NIBIB in the News

Thinking back to a year ago when terror struck worldwide and the full weight of the Covid-19 pandemic began to set in, NIH quickly mobilized on multiple fronts—one of which was the RADx initiative, with the goal of helping to meet the huge demand for fast, accurate Covid-19 tests. Source: NIH Record.

For this episode of the Microsamplify Podcast, we spoke with research scientist Kaitlyn Sadtler, PhD, an Earl Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator and Chief of the Section for Immunoengineering at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In early 2020, Dr. Sadtler and a team of researchers conducted one of the very first serology studies of the novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2, in an effort to identify undetected cases of COVID-19 illness in the United States. Source: Neoteryx

Pitt County, North Carolina “is one of two communities in the country that are part of a national study on ramping up at-home testing for coronavirus.” The county “is home to rolling farmland, the city of Greenville, East Carolina University and one of the largest health departments in eastern North Carolina.” Health leaders in the county “said that was why the National Institutes of Health chose the area to test what could be the future of coronavirus screening in the United States.” Source: WRAL=TV Raleigh, NC

Chattanooga, TN (WDEF) – The Say Yes! COVID Test At-Home Challenge launched Tuesday. The Hamilton County Health Department, CDC, and National Institute of Health all collaborated for this testing challenge. Source: WDEF News 12 Now

Update: The Hamilton County Health Department launched a new initiative to tackle the asymptomatic spread of COVID-19.

The "Say Yes! COVID Test" Challenge campaign kicked off on Tuesday.

The department partnered with the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health to provide county residents with free, rapid, at-home COVID-19 test kits. Source: WRCBtv

The FDA’s approval last month of “two rapid at-home antigen tests, Abbott’s BinaxNOW and Quidel’s QuickVue, [which] will soon be sold over the counter on drugstore shelves, without the need for a prescription.” The article says these approvals have critical potential impact on the testing front and will help the US catch up to other developed nations in terms of rapid antigen testing. The piece highlights comments in an interview by Bruce Tromberg, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, who said, “We are in a risky period with variant growth, incomplete vaccination, return to school, increased population mobility and reduced mask wearing. ... The need to do screening, using accessible tests at home, on a large scale and on a regular cadence, is even more important.” Source: Scientific American

Greenlight Guru, the medtech industry's leading medical device quality management software (MDQMS) platform, today announced its selection as the premier QMS for the National Institute of Health (NIH) Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) Tech program, led by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. This program aims to improve the speed of innovation in the development, commercialization and implementation of technologies for COVID-19 testing. Source: Prnewswire

he US RADx program has spawned a phalanx of diagnostic products to market in just 12 months. Its long-term impact on point-of-care, at-home and population testing may be even more profound. Source: Nature Biotechnology

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health announced a new initiative on Wednesday to help determine whether frequent, widespread use of rapid coronavirus test slows the spread of the virus. Source: The News Times.

Two US counties will receive a surge of free, rapid, at-home Covid-19 tests in an effort to study how people use them and how that impacts Covid-19 trends in the community, according to an announcement Wednesday by the National Institutes of Health. Source: CNN.