Pandemic Response Lab (PRL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Opentrons Labworks, Inc., today announced two new three-target monkeypox tests, each developed and performed by its New York and Maryland laboratories, respectively. These skin lesion tests qualitatively detect three different viral genome targets of increasing specificity: non-variola orthopoxvirus, monkeypox virus species and monkeypox virus clade II. Use of these three viral targets identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) enhances the ability to detect mutant monkeypox virus strains.
The outbreak and spread of the monkeypox virus was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization and by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in August 2022, when more than 25,000 cases had been identified across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. These U.S. infections make up more than one-third of all cases globally. Currently, only a handful of commercial laboratories have authorization to offer one of the CDC tests that targets a single location in the virus genome common to all non-variola orthopoxvirus.
PRL
