Researchers at the University of Warwick say they have developed a way to create more crucial reagents for use in COVID-19 tests that could also provide enhancements to the use of and production of future tests.
The high demand for the reagents used COVID-19 tests is creating supply issues in the UK and elsewhere. So, the researchers decided to help by trying to make more of the enzymes needed to produce reagents that could be used in commercially available testing kits.
They were successful in producing more of those crucial and much sought-after enzymes that will make more reagents for testing kits. They also found ways that could extend and simplify their use in COVID-19 tests.
The team have produced key enzymes that are crucial for COVID-19 tests: a reverse transcriptase; a Taq polymerase; an RNAse inhibitor (RNAsin); and rTth, a hybrid enzyme with reverse transcriptase and DNA polymerase activities.
They provided these to laboratories in two UK hospitals, who then tested and confirmed that they were effective in creating more COVID-19 testing.
The research also produced two further useful enzymes that would support the production of more reagents for COVID-19 testing. “In particular a Taq-related polymerase (rTth polymerase), which itself has the reverse transcriptase activity which would greatly simply the reagent production process and also render the reagent directly applicable in a single-step test,” said co-author Professor Mohan K. Balasubramanian.
