Company Provides Laboratories with Technologies for Swine Flu Detection

A company that provides innovative life-science solutions, announced that it is providing its technologies to health officials across the globe to aid in the identification of influenza strains, particularly the strain associated with the recent outbreak of the influenzavirus A H1N1, also known as swine flu.

Life Technologies (Gaithersburg, MD, USA), a company created by the combination of Invitrogen Corp. (Carlsbad, CA, USA) and Applied Bios stems, Inc. (Foster City, CA, USA), has formed a special 24-hour-a-day task force across key business units to coordinate the company-wide response to global requests for assistance with the outbreak. The task force is leading efforts to provide health agencies with front-line support such as instrument training, managing the supply chain to ensure that products get to customers as quickly as possible, and ensuring appropriate regulatory compliance. Life Technologies is also accelerating the manufacture of components that will be used by laboratories to test for and identify influenza.

Through its Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems brands, Life Technologies offers components that support the workflow surrounding the identification of influenza virus strains. The company's products include the MagMAX viral RNA isolation kits for RNA purification; the SuperScript III; Platinum One-Step reverse transcriptase- polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) kit for amplification of viral RNA; TaqMan Influenza A detection kit 2.0 for initial influenza type A screening; and several different capillary electrophoresis systems for determining the base-by-base sequence of viral samples. Additionally, the company offers its 7500 Fast and Fast Dx Real-Time PCR instruments under the Applied Biosystems brand.

"The spread of this new virus illustrates the importance of strong global surveillance programs," said Mark Stevenson, president and COO for Life Technologies. "Our technologies continue to be essential tools for public health agencies as they shift from reacting to the emergence of a potentially pandemic flu strain to proactively monitoring populations to identify the new strain as it arises."

Life Technologies is a global biotechnology tools company focused on improving the human condition. Life Technologies' customers do their work across the biologic spectrum, working to advance personalized medicine, molecular diagnostics, regenerative science, agricultural and environmental research, and 21st century forensics.

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