Thermo Fisher Scientific has announced the launch of the TrueMark Infectious Disease Research Panels designed to enable rapid and accurate detection and categorisation for investigating microorganisms that cause respiratory, vaginal, urinary, gastrointestinal, and sexually transmitted diseases.

To effectively study outbreaks and determine disease etiology where pathogens are similar, analytically sensitive panels are needed to support laboratory research. TrueMark Infectious Disease Research Panels are analytically sensitive, real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) syndromic panels for the analysis of a wide range of infectious disease pathogens.

Leveraging real-time PCR technology, the predefined and customizable panel options allow researchers to choose from more than 90 different bacterial and viral strain assays to generate results within four hours from taking the samples.

The assays use pre-spotted and dried down TaqMan plates, which are designed to enable easy set-up and increased accuracy. Testing can be done from nasopharyngeal swabs or nasopharyngeal aspirate, vaginal, genital and lesion swabs or urine samples. These samples can also be prepared using workflows that currently exist in most labs that use the Applied Biosystems MagMAX Viral/Pathogen kits automated on a KingFisher Purification System instrument and mixed with the Applied Biosystems multiplex master mix onto a 96-well or 384-well plate.